Stephen Sondheim Quotes

I've written poetry since I was in the first grade, and it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I realized poetry could be put to music and become a song.

Lyricists play with words.

I really wanted to work hard on my lyrics.

I love an imperfect rhyme.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream - they go together.

Form is endlessly interesting to me, and I love poetry as a formal enterprise.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

Lyrics are very different. There is a clear line between that and a poem. Something that has been a source of great excitement and delight for me is this idea that I get to rhyme.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

People used to say poems were different to songs but I don't think they are.

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.

I keep reminding people that an editorial in rhyme is not a song. A good song makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you think.

There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.

I like to write poetry.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

If you want to be a poet, you can just write it on a napkin, and it's the length of the napkin, I guess. But usually you decide you'll rhyme it, or you'll have a formula. In radio, that's something called, 'Close your eyes and listen.'

A poem is bound by language, but a poetics is not.

I love to write poetry.

Poetry is meant to be heard.

Great stories start with great opening lines. 'I'm a lineman for the county' - what a great way to start a song.

I like lyrics a lot.

With lyrics, being a poet gave me a different approach than other people.

Poetry, first and foremost, is the lyric. It's the music.

I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.