The music for 'The Last Five Years' is like running a 26-mile marathon, and singing Sondheim is like ballroom-dancing up Everest.

I don't think it's that I don't like Sondheim. It's that I find it really... I don't know how to describe it. Doing it is the most extraordinary thing. Because it's like Shakespeare times 100 with singing. It's that satisfying - and that demanding.

If I could play any role in any musical, it would be Desiree in 'A Little Night Music' - Oh my, it is perfection. The character gets to be funny, beautiful, sexy and smart all at the same time and have two men fighting over her. The show is Stephen Sondheim at his absolute best... need I say more?

I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can't analyze humor. You just have to get through it.

Stephen Sondheim I am in awe of.

Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

Sondheim informs us, more than any other composer, about the joys, passion and pain of being a woman living in various social conditions through the ages with frightening accuracy. Playing a variety of his characters has always made me feel like I'm having a free therapy session through his words and music!

That's the only show where, if anyone says to me, 'Is there a role you want to play?', I say, yeah, I want to play Sweeney Todd. Stephen Sondheim's so clever; it's a profoundly brilliant piece of work.

That's one of the beauties of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim and their work together. They have such a depth to the emotional exploration of the story that they're telling, but there's always a release, and the release is a laugh.

I first started listening to Sondheim's work when I was a kid.

There is genuine healing in a beautifully crafted musical theatre song, like Stephen Sondheim's 'Losing My Mind,' or a pop music gem like Joni Mitchell's 'Help Me.'

Tom Kitt aside - he's in his own category with me, of course - Stephen Sondheim is one of my all-time favorite composers.

Sondheim is New York.

I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.

'Sweeney Todd' is my favorite Sondheim musical.

I think one of my favorite productions ever was Sondheim's 'Assassins' at the Roundabout in 2004. Beyond brilliant.

In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.

My parents were what I like to call proper musical fans. Lots of Sondheim was played in the car.

Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there's great truth in the songs, and that's what was so wonderful to find.

No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person.