Andrew Lloyd Webber quotes:

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  • I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth.

  • The next few years are going to be horrendous in the UK. The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain's gale-force waters.

  • I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.

  • The moment the doctor said he wanted to do a biopsy, in my heart I thought I'd probably got it. But I also know a lot of people who have also had prostate cancer, so I had a reasonably good idea what to expect.

  • Superstar was made so early in my career I had nothing to do with it at all. The first time I saw it was the opening screening.

  • Here's the truth. The proposed top rate of income tax is not 50 per cent. It is 50 per cent plus 1.5 per cent national insurance paid by employees plus 13.3 per cent paid by employers. That's not 50 per cent. Two years from now, Britain will have the highest tax rate on earned income of any developed country.

  • I guess the thing is that we remained huge friends after the original Phantom movie, when we decided it wouldn't take place and we just saw each other socially over the years so we were friends.

  • Surely, you go to the theater because you want to have a great evening in the theater.

  • And it sort of jogged a memory of something that I read at school and I read it, and I thought God this is it. So you never can tell. I could find something this afternoon.

  • People in Britain always think of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' as a musical - it wasn't.

  • Well we'd just seen Gerry. I think he wanted somebody who had that authority and was handsome. The thing is, he's a big hunk isn't he? All I can say, if you look at his chat line, or the Phantom website, it's quite worrying. Because the girls really seem to love him.

  • I think Michael Crawford realised, I think we all realised, once we'd gone the route of casting a very young girl, you can't really cast a 65 year old man opposite. Slightly different resonance I think. No, we weren't going to go there. We'd have Jack Nicholson in the lead.

  • I said, look, do you think you could bring Gerry through, and they said yeah, absolutely, they thought that. Joel was very keen to cast him. If all my music team were happy, I was happy.

  • I mean I don't really think about it. You know, do you know what I often say to myself? I think you're very lucky in life if you know what you want to do.

  • Sometimes it's very difficult to keep momentum when it's you that you are following. - Andrew Lloyd Webber

  • You're the luckiest person in the entire world if you know what you really want to do, which I was lucky enough to know when I was very young. And you're the luckiest person in the world if you can then make a living out of it.

  • Music, architecture and pictures have always been my passions, and all that material wealth has meant for me, is being able to have some of the pictures I liked.

  • I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't, I've written 14 musicals now, I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.

  • In Evita I wasn't really hugely involved with it. I gave a little bit of help but they needed a bit of technical help on the movie and so some of my music people went in at the end of the movie and helped out with it.

  • Corny answer is of course is that everyone who wants musicals are children in different ways, aren't they? So you think of them in different ways. There are things of mine I'm sorry haven't come here.

  • What strikes me is that there's a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.

  • I don't think I am that materialistic, actually. Obviously at home in the country the art collection is important, but we have one big room in the middle of the house where we do everything - the television, the kitchen, everything.

  • I've got to find something and if I find something that I like, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.

  • I knew nothing about film at all. I suppose the biggest surprise is all these things. In the theatre we sort of do, I might do two or three key interviews and that would be it.

  • It doesn't stand up to huge intellectual scrutiny.

  • I think it's probably, musically, probably the most sophisticated. ("The Woman in White") There's a lot more daring harmony in it than in some of my pieces...If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask, isn't it?...Sondheim is absolutely wonderful and Alan Jay Lerner was wonderful.

  • It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.

  • I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I'm writing on the piano.

  • As a composer at a point where I can absolutely pick and choose what I want to do, I don't want to write about anybody I don't care about.

  • I guess we've had a very close relationship because I don't pretend to know about cinema and I think I do know a bit about theatre but he does, he respected that and so we really just had a collaboration which went completely like this.

  • If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask isn't it? I think I don't really think too much about it. I am a bit shy socially, yeah, I admit that.

  • 'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it.

  • Negative things, and they were all deliberate and I'm not going to say who they were but I know who they were and it was in the business, and that's not a good sign.

  • No matter what they tell you, no matter what they do, no matter what they teach you, what you believe is true.

  • Nobody seems to think it's a good idea to mention mistakes, but I think it's important to acknowledge the mistakes you've made in life, because it's really through those that you learn things. I've made hundreds....

  • Look with your heart and not with your eyes. The heart understands. The heart never lies. Believe what it feels, and trust what it shows. Look with your heart; the heart always knows. Love is not always beautiful, not at the start. But open your arms, and close your eyes tight. Look with your heart and when it finds love, your heart will be right.

  • What strikes me is that theres a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.

  • Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendor.Grasp it; sense it - tremulous and tender.Turn your face away from the garish light of day, turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light - and listen to the music of the night !

  • Love can make a summer fly, or a night seem like a lifetime.

  • When people ask me if musical theatre should be taught in music colleges, I reply that there is no need. All anyone needs to study is the second act of La Boheme because it is the most tightly constructed piece of musical theatre that there is. It is practically director-proof: you can't stage it badly because it just works too well. If you can write La Boheme, you can write anything. I would also recommend studying Britten's Peter Grimes.

  • Softly, deftly, music shall caress you. Hear it, feel it, Secretly possess you.

  • I would have gone right ahead but the only thing, the only phenomenon that's going on now of course, which is different in my experiences, is that you are getting things planted in the Net by people about the Woman in White on the Net. That's not a nice change.

  • No more memories, no more silent tears. No more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye.

  • The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven't.

  • All I've ever tried to do is get the best out of people and to bring a bit of humour into it. Unlike, say, 'The X-Factor,' which may be great TV, but has no humour at all.

  • Two years ago I hadn't even thought of the Woman in White, and I was doing a television show and I said I hadn't found a story and the next day somebody rang me and said have you ever thought of the Woman in White.

  • Love changes everything. Days are longer, words mean more. Love changes everything. Pain is deeper than before. Love can turn your world around, and that world will last forever.

  • We don't have butlers. Obviously we have people who look after the houses, but I try not to run things formally.

  • Think of me, think of me fondly When we've said goodbye Remember me once in a while Please promise me, you'll try... Recall those days, look back on all those times Think of those things we'll never do There will never be a day When I won't think of you... Can it be? Can it be Christine... Long ago, it seems so long ago How young and innocent we were She may not remember me But I remember her

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