Quotes from Andrew Lloyd Webber

Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience.

I'm not a critic, and I never talk about other people's work.

I don't really care very much if I don't think that the critics really understand music.

Disgracefully, the arts have too often borne the brunt of short-sighted cuts to educational budgets.

I put a hell of a lot of myself into 'Love Never Dies,' and I felt quite drained afterwards.

Here's the truth. The proposed top rate of income tax is not 50 per cent. It is 50 per cent plus 1.5 per cent national insurance paid by employees plus 13.3 per cent paid by employers. That's not 50 per cent. Two years from now, Britain will have the highest tax rate on earned income of any developed country.

I guess we've had a very close relationship because I don't pretend to know about cinema and I think I do know a bit about theatre but he does, he respected that and so we really just had a collaboration which went completely like this.

I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.

I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't, I've written 14 musicals now, I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.

No more memories, no more silent tears. No more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye.

Love changes everything. Days are longer, words mean more. Love changes everything. Pain is deeper than before. Love can turn your world around, and that world will last forever.

Look with your heart and not with your eyes. The heart understands. The heart never lies. Believe what it feels, and trust what it shows. Look with your heart; the heart always knows. Love is not always beautiful, not at the start. But open your arms, and close your eyes tight. Look with your heart and when it finds love, your heart will be right.

Love never dies. Love will continue. Love keeps on beating when you're gone. Love never dies once it is in you. Life may be fleeting; love lives on! Life may be fleeting! Love lives on...

And music, your music, it teases at my ear. I turn and it fades away and you're not here! Let hopes pass! Let dreams pass! Let them die! Without you, what are they for? I always feel no more than half-way real 'til I hear you sing once more!

And music, our music, will swell and then unwind like two strands of melody at last entwined. Fulfill us! Complete us! Make us whole! Seal our bond forevermore! Tonight for me, embrace your destiny! Let me hear you sing once more!

Christine: In sleep he sang to me In dreams he came. That voice which calls to me, And speaks my name. And do I dream again? For now I find, The phantom of the opera is here, Inside my mind Phantom: Sing once again with me , Our strange duet. My power over you, Grows strenger yet. And though you turn from me, To glace behind. The phantom of the opera is there, Inside your mind ? ? The Phantom of the Opera ? ?

Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind.

You feel ugly, you feel used, you feel broken you feel bruised. Ahh but me, I can see all the beauty underneath. You've been robbed of love and pride. Been ignored and cast aside. Even so, I still know there is beauty underneath. Diamonds never sparkled bright, if they are they are set just right. Beauty sometimes goes unseen. -Phantom

Sometimes it's very difficult to keep momentum when it's you that you are following. - Andrew Lloyd Webber

Oh, by the way, Chuck, I spilled tea on your bongos.

Should you want to listen to Variations, try hearing it from a good-condition original 1978 vinyl pressing. Because the sides are relatively short, the sound quality is amazing.

You are lucky if you know what you want to do in life. You are incredibly lucky if you are able to have a career in it.

I remember being struck that, as with the Old Possum poems, Eliot had written "Billy McCaw" with a defined verse and chorus almost as if he were writing lyrics. Here Eliot betrays that he was American. I don't believe any British poet wrote at the time like this. Years later Valerie told me that Eliot invariably had a hit tune of the time in his head when he wrote what she called his "off-duty" poems.

Although the material Valerie gave me changed the direction of "Practical Cats," Cameron and I soon realized that to make a musical out of such a potpourri a writer would have to come on board. Faber boss Matthew Evans was extremely nervous and thought Valerie would find the idea difficult. It was now blindingly obvious that without a director with a pedigree like Trevor Nunn's she could veto "Practical Cats," at least as a musical.