Quotes

[Of the music written by Ira and George Gershwin, especially 'Summertime'] I never realized how good our music was until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing it.

Given a fondness for music, a feeling for rhyme, a sense of whimsy and humor, an eye for the unbalanced sentence, an ear for the current phrase, and the ability to imagine oneself a performer trying to put over the number in progress - given all this, I still would say it takes four or five years collaborating with knowledgeable composers to become a well-rounded lyricist.

I read a book about the occupation of Denmark. The author told all about how the Nazis would do their regular propaganda broadcasts on the radio, with the fanfares and the music, and whenever they'd finished doing their regular stuff, the underground radio would come on immediately afterward and play 'It Ain't Necessarily So'.

[on DuBose Heyward] All his fine and poetic lyrics were set to music by George with scarcely a syllable being changed - an aspect of this composer's versatility not generally recognized. These many years [later] I can still shake my head in wonder at the reservoir of musical inventiveness, resourcefulness, and craftsmanship George could dip into. And no fraternal entrancement - my wonderment.

A career of lyric-writing isn't one that anyone can muscle in on; that if the lyricist who lasts isn't a W.S. Gilbert he is at least literate and conscientious; that even when his words at times sound like something off the cuff, lots of hard work and exper9ience have made them so.

I guess I've always considered perfection, or as close as I can come to it, my armor. And I know that even if the lyric failed I had done my very best.

It sounds like a pompous word but George inspired me. He was always full of new ideas, and he was so good a musician that I could do things with lyrics that I couldn't do with just a songwriter. I'm not just interested in writing songs. I like to do things with a twist - things that you might call artistic.

You know, I always avoided George when I could because he would ask me what I was doing, tell me to get busy, and all that...I always felt that if George hadn't been my brother and pushed me into lyric-writing, I'd have been contented to be a bookkeeper.

Lyrics are written up to public taste, and that's a high target... The words mustn't be precious or condescending...A writer can't get away with the 'blue/you' sort of stuff any longer...A good lyric should be rhymed conversation.

Lyric writing, like tea-tasting and hitting the chimes for half-hour station announcements, has become a profession. A precarious profession, no doubt - in that the east side marriage broker has as yet put no valuation on, one that is looked down on as a racket in some literary fields, but one which nevertheless requires a certain dexterity with words and a feeling for music on the one hand, and on the other, the infinite patience of the gem-setter, compatibility with the composer and an understanding of the various personalities in the cast.

[on George S. Kaufman] He hated music you know. I remember standing at a performance of "Of Thee I Sing". My brother George and I and Kaufman. Kaufman turned over to George and said, "How do you account for the success of this thing?" And my brother said, "George, you don't like to be sentimental. You hate love and so forth. But the people believe that the President of the United States, even though he's going to be impeached, is not going to give up the girl he loves".