Quotes from Robert Lopez

I did a musical episode of 'Scrubs.'

There's been a lot of Catholic parody - 'Nunsense,' 'Sister Mary Ignatius' - I think they've almost been done to death, actually.

Whenever someone wants to say something to a whole mass of people by breaking into song, there's probably something wrong with them.

On Broadway, there is no censoring, just self-censorship and doing what makes sense.

I don't think I met an actual Mormon until college, and by that time, I was wary of them. I knew about the church through school and, secondhand, through non-Mormon friends.

When we wrote 'Avenue Q,' we worked hard to create something that could be funny and satirical but also had some surprise moments of heart, moments when the music itself could become a central player and create something sweet and moving.

Our kids come first, and we really put them at the top of our priority list.

We love the great Disney songs - they have always inspired us in our work and in our lives! But for 'Let It Go,' we looked elsewhere - to powerful female singer-songwriters like Tori Amos, Aimee Mann, Sara Bareilles, Adele.

This is one of my lesser moments, and one I'm not proud to admit to, but there's always a time I feel the need to have control over the process and try to defend the song from the person I'm writing with. It never, ever helps and always causes problems.

The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I've ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.

The things that I have done that haven't been as successful have been things that have been largely out of the public view, which is great. It's terrible, when you're a theater writer, to have a big flop publicly.

If all you have is satire, your show will close. Even if all you have is comedy, your show will close. The hardest thing is not making people laugh: the hardest thing is building an emotional story. Any child can make a group of adults laugh.

In 'Winnie the Pooh,' a lot of the characters have serious flaws: Pooh is sort of a food addict. Rabbit is OCD, and Owl is a compulsive liar.

I don't know if I have good habits, but I'm very devoted to writing. I'm very compulsive about having a project, at least one, and trying to follow the business as much as I can. I keep on top of all the entertainment business news.

I basically never feel like writing. I am a happy-go-lucky, relaxed, fun-seeking kind of person. And working disturbs that, because it puts me in a state of anxiety.

I'm not an advocate of true rhymes, I don't think. I think that everyone who writes musical theater needs to know how to do true rhymes, because that's the tradition of it, but I do think that in order for the art form to grow, it's important to not let tradition get in the way of innovation.

I thought it would be really cool to show the world the inner life of someone like me, who doesn't have a huge personality, who deals with some personal demons and is a little bit shy and a little awkward when you first get to know me.

I am never excited to play through a song all the way, because it can reveal more flaws that mean more work. For some reason, I always have an irrational fear that the song will never be finished.

It's so important, after a song is finished, to go to sleep and listen to the song with fresh ears the next day. It's sometimes a traumatic event. And playing it for someone else for the first time - that is the most nerve-wracking thing of all. But we learn so much.

Filipino pride. I'm so excited, I'm just sending love to the Philippines. I know they've had a tough year and I just send out my feelings to them.

People are born with the ability to make judgments. And they can't help but use the information they have to divine something about the world they're in. Making categorical judgments, in large, helps our society.

It's wonderful to be able to have such wildly different projects in your body of work. They don't feel different to me as I'm working on them. It feels like they all share this element of subversiveness and finding the joy in subversiveness.

Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.

Whenever Disney asks if you want to do a fairy tale musical, you say yes.