Musicals Quotes

“I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led to those who help us most to grow
If we let them and we help them in return.”
― Stephen Schwartz

“[BURR]
I am the one thing in life I can control.”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton: The Revolution

“[HAMILTON]
I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda

“[ELIZA]
You and your words flooded my senses, your sentences left me defenseless. You built me palaces out of paragraphs, you built cathedrals.”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda

“....Everyone deserves a chance to fly!”
― Stephen Schwartz, Wicked: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical

“Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

“Best to take the moment present
As a present for the moment”
― Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods

“I chose and my world was shaken, so what? The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George

“Was that me? Yes it was. Was that him? No it wasn't..
Just a trick of the woods!
Just a moment,
One peculiar passing moment.
Must it all be either less or more,
Either plain or grand?
Is it always 'or'?
Is it never 'and'?
That's what woods are for:
For those moments in the woods...
Oh, if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one--!
But if life were only moments,
Then you'd never know you had one.
First a witch, then a child, then a Prince, then a moment--
Who can live in the woods?
And to get what you wish, only just for a moment--
These are dangerous woods..
Let the moment go..
Don't forget it for a moment, though.
Just remembering you had an 'and,' when you're back to 'or,'
Makes the 'or' mean more than is did before.
Now I understand--
And it's time to leave the woods.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods

“And you find some way to survive
And you find out you don't have to be happy at all..
To be happy you're alive.”
― Brian Yorkey

“I, on the other hand, interrupt people because my thoughts fly out of my mouth. My handbag's full of rubbish. And I want to do something that matters with my life. Right now I'd like to write plays, sing in musicals, and/or rid the world of poverty, violence, cruelty, and right-wing conservative politics.”
― Alison Larkin, The English American

“Writing is a form of mischief.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1981-2011, With Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes, and Miscellany

“Of the voices in my head, the loudest one is mine.”
― Joe Iconis, Be More Chill

“Every single day is tzimmes
Happiness and grief, always in season
Never just one way, but tzimmes
I will tell you why, one simple reason...
Whether your tzimmes is sweet or savory, simple or complex, I hope you learn to love it ... there is strength in the tzimmes pot.”
― Shellen Lubin

“Every single day is tzimmes
Because
Everyone you know is tzimmes
And so
Everyone you love is tzimmes”
― Shellen Lubin

“It was an insane venture.

And then, while I was working away at figuring out how to make it happen,
I watched Inventing Anna,
and at the end of the whole series of episodes,
this accomplished con artist
was asked what most surprised her about people...
She said she was surprised that people couldn't live with
a higher level of anxiety.
She believed that that was what brought her down.

And at that moment I knew that that was what I needed to get through
this whole venture:
to be able to live with that level of anxiety.

And I could. And I did.”
― Shellen Lubin

“If Patti Lupone was born to play Evita then Madonna was born to play Patti Lupone playing Evita.”
― Buck Bannister

“I have no doubt that, had I actually been growing up in the 1930s or 1940s, I would have been grooving to turn-of-the-century beats.”
― Emma Brockes, What Would Barbra Do?: How Musicals Changed My Life

“Hair represented the foundational ideas that prepared us and our world for the principles that underlie today's most influential mindset -- New Age thinking.”
― Caryl Matrisciana, Out of India

“Life tells you how to live it, if you live long enough.”
― De-Lovely

“Poor guy's head is spinning!”
― Jack Feldman, Newsies: Music from the Broadway Musical Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords

“Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express - Nick Klezek”
― Nick Klezek

“It’s as though the blinkers have been removed and I’m seeing clearly for the first time in a long while. Real-life romance is not the sugar-coated version you see in films and books and musicals.”
― Helen Libby

“Write this play like a composer. I’ve always said that the best members of this troupe came from musicals, and I stand by that. To do what we do, you gotta be able to hear the music—even when it isn’t there.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“The bit was in my mouth. At last, for the first time since sleeping in crab-infested blankets in the dressing-room at Hayling Island, living on evaporated milk and biscuits, swanking about as a peroxided Hamlet, to an audience of geriatric holiday-makers, I had contrived some sort of personal control over the whole brash enterprise. I would only have myself to blame. The release from benign paternalism was firingly enjoyable.”
― John Osborne, Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise

“See old man Pulitzer snug in his bed, he don't care if we're dead or alive
Three satin pillows are under his head, while we's begging for bread to survive”
― Alan Menken, Jack Feldman

“You can't stop an avalanche
As it races down the hill
You can try to stop the seasons, girl
But you know you never will”
― March Shaiman, Scott Michael Wittman

“the answer should be a musical”
― Anna Deveare Smith

“Music allows us a little more insight into the ways of the heart.”
― Andrew Pacholyk, Lead Us To A Place: Your Spiritual Journey Through Life's Seasons

“The thing I love about Edna, compared to Cello’s Prom Date or Little Shop’s Mrs. Luce, is that she is such a wonderful, well-rounded (pun not intended) character. I felt that Mrs. Luce and the Prom Date were one note characters, whether they were played by a man or a woman - but were definitely played for laughs by throwing me in a wig and dress, that playing Edna was a breath of fresh hairspray…I mean air. She was actually developed into a human being; she loves her husband and her daughter, she has her fears about how the world would view her and her daughter for being overweight, disappointment that her hopes and dreams didn’t come true (explaining why she is strict with Tracy), and the pride she feels when Tracy becomes successful.”
― Michael J. Mantsourani, Life is Staged: A Memoir on Finding Myself in High School Theater