Quotes from James Lapine

In most audience-participation shows, the participant is so clearly not a part of what's going on that it's the fish-out-of-water aspect that makes it funny.

I love the visual aspect of the theater. But I like what people have to say, too.

It's also hard to trust yourself when you know you're that person that might run out the door.

Likewise a poet.

I love photography... I'd like to write a show about photography.

Good musicals, a strange world, seem so easy. People say, 'Ohhh, it's magic.' Nothing's magic. A thing doesn't jell. Adapt. Change the rhythm. Shorten the scene. Rewrite the character. Maneuver the waters. Seeming easy is why so many shows aren't good.

I'm never so into the three-act movie thing. I know that's the form that people talk about, but it seems to me, in the movie, you just have to keep charging forward. You couldn't start over again like you do after an intermission. You just had to keep the plot moving forward.

When you grow up, you don't realize that your parents are any different than anybody else's. And their behavior - you have nothing to compare it to. So that is what normal is, even if it's abnormal.

I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.

If you're like me and nosy, you're always eavesdropping on other people's conversations.

Fairy tales, which teach a moral lesson, are about ourselves. Myth deals with forces greater than ourselves.

Fairy tales cross generational lines, and how you respond to them depends on when in your life you're seeing them.

I've ended up working with Disney a lot, which is kind of peculiar. In theater, I've done a couple of projects with them and written a couple movies and whatnot.

When you're trying out on Broadway, it's very hectic, and you're making changes night after night. There's a lot of pressures from producers to make some changes, and you're writing for actors who are in it - and sometimes the limitations of actors who are in it.

I'd like to just say that there's nothing darker than 'Old Yeller' and 'Bambi' and some of the early Disney stuff.

I like the stage challenges of having somebody literally falling apart before your very eyes.

I like to keep a low profile.

The one thing you don't want to do is go off and keep rewriting. If something's not quite right, it's often about modulating what's already there.

Sometimes good news is hard to absorb.

You can't be theoretical when you're building a musical.

I really enjoyed writing the adaptation of 'Into The Woods.' I thought it was wonderful to not be the director, frankly. I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

I did 'Impromptu,' which was a thrill and a horror all at once - my first movie and having to do it in Paris, and my wife wrote it, and I had some difficulties on the set, blah, blah, blah.

I have nothing to hide.

We live in an era of reinvention: Madonna and everybody desperately trying to change their persona.