Stephen Sondheim Quotes

I think the artist has an ability to draw pictures for people to where they can process these messages that otherwise they wouldn't be open to hearing.

I know that the gift that God gave me isn't gonna just wither up and die unless I let it die, so it's a matter of me having the faith that it's gonna come out. Whether or not the public's gonna like it is another story. But I think as long as I keep changing and sticking to what I really love - and the same goes for Steven and the other guys in the band - then people are gonna like it.

When you've written a song, sometimes it's really hard to wrap your brain around what somebody else is doing, or maybe the way that they see the song.

When you're working with the same band you kind of know their style inside out, and even when you've been working for seven years with the same people, suddenly they'll do something you didn't even think they were capable of.

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

I think the music reflects the state that the society is in. It doesn't suggest the state. I think the poets and musicians and artists are of the age - not only do they lead the age on, but they also reflect that age. [...] Like The Beatles. We came out of Liverpool and we reflected our background and we reflected our thoughts in what we sang, and that's all people are doing.

I am a better writer for having fewer demons, and I am more curious about the world and the people in it. So those of you thinking you might need your demons in order to be creative: I beg to differ.

A good many people think as I do. If they like my work they are creative . . . or they are crazy.

He [Andy Warhol] engaged people and I think all of that is what helped keep him keyed in to the times beyond all of the celebrity stuff that was going on around him. He was much more like a fan than a celebrity himself.

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

I know people think that acting is not quite the occupation of grown-ups, but it is actually the ultimate learning process: You get a multitude of experiences, all for the price of one life.

Raydiation is more mature, reveals more about me personally and focuses on singing and songs that people can relate to.

I think that if people get my music, then they get what my message is.

In order to reinvent yourself, you have to dig deep and look at yourself. I'd lost my way creatively, and I was humbled, and so I think I got really basic about wanting to depict people in the ways that I find them amazing and funny and emotional and that I can relate to and do from an instinctive, gut place. People trying to survive ... That's what all my movies are about.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

Singing other people's material was perceived, I think, as a weakness of my persona. The effect, though, was to make me dig my heels in and try even harder to combine the two.

The mission of the theatre, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

Some people get medals and awards and all that, and maybe not intentionally - maybe the world is making them do it - but they sort of just follow what they were doing. Repeat or follow what they were doing all their lives, in their style of music or whatever. In my case, I always try to start from scratch. It's very nerve-wracking actually, but it's interesting.

For every wacky postcard, there's a million people waiting to buy it, and for every $10 million of those things, there's one Rembrandt. Purposely, I think I want to aim at doing something that a lot of people won't like. I'm just worried that it looks like I've compared my work with Rembrandt. "Gervais says he's better than Rembrandt!".

I know the world that I am painting is not a reality. It is a whim, an entertainment to provoke something in people, whether as escapism or relief. I think that is very valid.

I'm still doing me. I try to come up with different concept for my shows, you gotta keep the people interested, but I'm still me.

Some people think a song without words isn't a real song. Tell that to Beethoven and he'll kick your ass!

Part of the reason that these attempts at explanation fail, I think, is that photographers, like all artists, choose their medium because it allows them the most fully truthful expression of their vision... as Robert Frost told a person who asked him what one of his poems meant, 'You want me to say it worse?'

Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.