Aug 10, 2017
The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis.
Thurgood Marshall
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The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis.
Thurgood Marshall
[Higgins] appears in the morning light as a robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty or thereabouts, dressed in a professional-looking black frock-coat with a white linen collar and black silk tie. He is of the energetic, scientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about himself and other people, including their feelings. He is, in fact, but for his years and size, rather like a very impetuous baby 'taking notice' eagerly and loudly, and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of unintended mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a good humor to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but he is so entirely frank and void of malice that he remains likable even in his least reasonable moments.
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
Magic is a collection of tiny lies, in words and deeds, that are stacked and arranged ingeniously to form the battlement for an illusion. It’s a delicate battle of wits—an audience that welcomes being deceived, then dares to be fooled, alternately questioning, prodding, and surrendering.
Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant (1958)
While Sondheim's songs express the characters invented by his collaborators, the fact remains that many of us have a consistent emotional reaction to his canon as a whole. That's not just due to the formal brilliance of the music and lyrics. There's an underlying humanity: We respond to a psychopath singing an ode to his razors in Sweeney Todd much as we do to a faded showgirl unraveling in a torch song in Follies or to Georges Seurat finishing the hat in Sunday in the Park With George. The little bit of Sondheim that he says can be found in all his songs is what moves us even as he channels it into so many disparate fictional creations.
Frank Rich, “The Sondheim Puzzle,” New York Magazine, 2013
Tim [Burton] took a risk when he asked me to play Sweeney Todd because neither he nor I knew if I could sing when I accepted it. I went into the recording studio with a friend of mine to see if I could do it. My singing's not unlike the mating call of a rutting stag. It's a strange sound, but I haven't been fired yet.
Johnny Depp, interview with The Telegraph, May 2007
'Here's the politician—so oily / It's served with a doily. Not one?' 'Put it on a bun. / Well you never know if it's going to run.'
“A Little Priest,” Sweeney Todd
Ask yourself what you really want from God. Make a list of each and everything, no matter how small or how big it is, whether it deals with this world or not.
God loves to hear from us. Once this list is ready, you can do three things:
Ask God to give you those things.
Think about what actions you have taken to get those things.
Develop a work plan to get those things in future.
Instead of judging someone for what they have done or how they look, try instead to understand the person. Put yourself in their shoes. Try to imagine their background.
If possible, talk to them. Find out their backstory. Everyone has one. If not, try to imagine the circumstances that might have led to the person acting or looking like they do.
We don’t know the pain they’re working through.