Meredith Willson quotes:

Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong.

Speaking of River City in The Music Man & his home town, Mason City, Iowa: I didn't have to make up anything. I simply remembered Mason City as closely as I could.

I haven't seen Iowa people get so excited since the night Frank Gotch and Strangler Lewis lay on the mat for three and a half hours without moving a muscle.

Where is the good in goodbye?

Regarding the current Broadway revival of The Music Man, Jay Nordlinger wrote: There will always be those who sniff that the show is "feel good"-but, oh, it feels good to feel good. And the main reason The Music Man feels so good is that it is good-a great American musical.

A man can't turn tail and run just because a little personal risk is involved. What did Shakespeare say? 'Cowards die a thousand deaths, the brave man... only 500?'

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man...only five hundred.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas; Soon the bells will start, And the thing that will make them ring Is the carol that you sing Right within your heart.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go; Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again. With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.

From the explanatory notes that Willson wrote to accompany his symphony, A Symphony of San Francisco,: "Generally speaking, the first movement is intended to convey pioneer courage, loyalty, strength of purpose and freedom." The trumpet motive in the closing Allegro "is a call of defiance to the very elements themselves that had the temerity to dispute the spiritual strength and courage of the golden city of the West."

Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today.

Regarding The Music Man, Jay Nordlinger wrote: The Music Man (for which Willson also wrote the lyrics) is an astonishing creation. It came in a spurt of brilliance. It is shot through with originality, verve, and-why not go all the way?-genius. People love it, can't get enough of it, can't stop performing it-and they are not wrong. For closing in on a half- century now, The Music Man has been performed continually, in every American city, town, and village, and in other parts of the world as well, not excluding Peking.

There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging, No I never saw them at all, Until there was you.

You pile up enough tomorrows and you'll be left with nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering.