Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

My idea of heaven is not writing.

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

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write.

The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.

When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.

You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people.

On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.

The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.

I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.

I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.

I played the organ when I went to military school, when I was 10. They had a huge organ, the second-largest pipe organ in New York State. I loved all the buttons and the gadgets. I've always been a gadget man.

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.