Stephen Sondheim Quotes

Of what use were wings to a man fast bound in chains of iron?

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

There can be many bars, wires that keep a person trapped. All of them don't have to have been created for the purpose of harming or caging the bird, but they still serve that function.

He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

I have never in my life walked with a harness. The weight of the tether, makes it feel like I'm dragging an anchor behind me.

It's difficult to put into words what freedom feels like. You only know what freedom feels like if you know what it feels like to not be free.

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.

I don't want to live like a prisoner.

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

I really like cages.

When you put a top on something and try to bottle it, that's when it dies.

I'm like a caged animal sometimes. Let me yearn to breathe free.

What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two.

A cage that allows someone to walk around inside of it is still a cage.

People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage.

A bird in a cage is not half a bird.

A jailer is as much a prisoner as his prisoner.

A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back.

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

Hee is not free that drawes his chaine.

One good thing about being locked in a cage: No responsibility!

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

Is the prisoner a prisoner because he lives in a cage or because he knows that he lives in a cage?