Irving Berlin: "Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies."
George Gershwin: "Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come."
Cole Porter: "My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director."
Richard Rodgers: "It took about as long to compose it as to play it." (said about "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning", the opening song in "Oklahoma!")
Oscar Hammerstein II: "I hand him a lyric and get out of his way."
Stephen Sondheim: "Clever rhyming is easy, anybody can do it...Oscar Hammerstein II taught me that a song should be like a little one-act play, with an exposition, a development and a conclusion; at the end of the song the char...