Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.

If I cannot fly, let me sing.

Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.

The only reason to write is from love.

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.

Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.

Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.

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.

Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.

Swing your razor wide! Sweeney, hold it to the skies!

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

Words mean nothingActions are everythingExpect nothingAppreciate everything

Everything is good when it is on time.

The Union, which can alone insure internal peace, and external security to each State, Must and Shall be Preserved, cost what it may in time, treasure, and blood.

I write of youth, of love, and have access by these to sing of cleanly wantonness.

In societies where coolness and being cool is a top priority, the religious replace the word 'religious' with 'spiritual' to make their faiths seem less extreme.

The Time It Never Rained was inspired by actual events, when the longest and most severe drought in living memory pressed ranchers and farmers to the outer limits of courage and endurance.

Research is always a very necessary part of my process because all of my books to this point have been historical. Time spent in the library adds to one's wealth as a writer or artist.

All my references are 50 years old-when somebody shot J.R., you know? Oh my god, I'm 100!

Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.

She took the sun when it came and the rain the same way.