Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father. I liked my father a lot, he was a swell fellow, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him and did everything she could to prevent me from seeing him.

I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?

My parents weren't around much, but I assumed everybody's family was the same. I didn't know people had mummies and daddies who would give them milk and cookies after school. I just thought everybody lived on Central Park West and they had a nanny to take care of them.

For me it's more fun to find an unexpected moment for a character to sing when you don't expect them to.

Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.

Stay a child while you can be a child.

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.

I have, by nature, an analytical mind.

I liked my father a lot, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him. He remarried, and I used to have to sneak off to see him.

My idea of heaven is not writing.

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.

Puzzles are like songs. A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.

Musicals are so expensive to put on the stage that you have to have the backing of a corporate, you have to have Universal Studios or Disney or somebody to put in the money.

Over a period of time it's been driven home to me that I'm not going to be the most popular writer in the world, so I'm always happy when anything in any way is accepted.