Andrew Lloyd Webber Quotes

“Music, architecture and pictures have always been my passions, and all that material wealth has meant for me, is being able to have some of the pictures I liked.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

All I've ever tried to do is get the best out of people and to bring a bit of humour into it. Unlike, say, 'The X-Factor,' which may be great TV, but has no humour at all.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“What strikes me is that there's a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“And it sort of jogged a memory of something that I read at school and I read it, and I thought God this is it. So you never can tell. I could find something this afternoon.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Surely, you go to the theater because you want to have a great evening in the theater.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask isn't it? I think I don't really think too much about it. I am a bit shy socially, yeah, I admit that.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

Well the least favourite question is the one that one's asked particularly about in Japan is what's the difference between theatre and cinema and I think, well, that's about eighty bucks.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“People in Britain always think of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' as a musical - it wasn't.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“You're the luckiest person in the entire world if you know what you really want to do, which I was lucky enough to know when I was very young. And you're the luckiest person in the world if you can then make a living out of it.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“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.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“As a composer at a point where I can absolutely pick and choose what I want to do, I don't want to write about anybody I don't care about.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I said, look, do you think you could bring Gerry through, and they said yeah, absolutely, they thought that. Joel was very keen to cast him. If all my music team were happy, I was happy.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Well we'd just seen Gerry. I think he wanted somebody who had that authority and was handsome. The thing is, he's a big hunk isn't he? All I can say, if you look at his chat line, or the Phantom website, it's quite worrying. Because the girls really seem to love him.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Superstar was made so early in my career I had nothing to do with it at all. The first time I saw it was the opening screening.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“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.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“The next few years are going to be horrendous in the UK. The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain's gale-force waters.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Because her voice is, it's like the muscles and it develops all the time. That was the fantastic thing for us.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I've got to find something and if I find something that I like, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven't.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I'm writing on the piano.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

It doesn't stand up to huge intellectual scrutiny.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I think Michael Crawford realised, I think we all realised, once we'd gone the route of casting a very young girl, you can't really cast a 65 year old man opposite. Slightly different resonance I think. No, we weren't going to go there. We'd have Jack Nicholson in the lead.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

Corny answer is of course is that everyone who wants musicals are children in different ways, aren't they? So you think of them in different ways. There are things of mine I'm sorry haven't come here.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I don't think I am that materialistic, actually. Obviously at home in the country the art collection is important, but we have one big room in the middle of the house where we do everything - the television, the kitchen, everything.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I mean I don't really think about it. You know, do you know what I often say to myself? I think you're very lucky in life if you know what you want to do.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

I knew nothing about film at all. I suppose the biggest surprise is all these things. In the theatre we sort of do, I might do two or three key interviews and that would be it.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“When we finally came to start work on this, the joy was it was only Joel and I, we didn't have to answer to anybody, and we didn't have to submit a screen play or anything like that. We just wrote it and then made it.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I began to think, now is the time. I found quite a lot of opposition in Hollywood about the idea of doing a film musical and we ended up having to buy the rights back. I'm glad we did because it meant John and I were able to make exactly the movie we wanted.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I think that the wonderful advantage we have in the film of being able to cast a girl as young as Emmy and which we couldn't do in the theatre of course because no girl of 16 or 17 could sing 8 shows a week, couldn't sing two.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“In Evita I wasn't really hugely involved with it. I gave a little bit of help but they needed a bit of technical help on the movie and so some of my music people went in at the end of the movie and helped out with it.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“We felt we had to know something of his back story. I don't think people in the cinema would just accept that he's there. I think we had to learn how he (got there).”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I guess the thing is that we remained huge friends after the original Phantom movie, when we decided it wouldn't take place and we just saw each other socially over the years so we were friends.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

I think back at the time, if it had been 1988, I would have thought Michael and Sarah probably would have been cast but I don't think, I think it's much better that the girl is younger and if Sarah would have been 26 or 27 then.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“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.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I would have gone right ahead but the only thing, the only phenomenon that's going on now of course, which is different in my experiences, is that you are getting things planted in the Net by people about the Woman in White on the Net. That's not a nice change.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Negative things, and they were all deliberate and I'm not going to say who they were but I know who they were and it was in the business, and that's not a good sign.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“The moment the doctor said he wanted to do a biopsy, in my heart I thought I'd probably got it. But I also know a lot of people who have also had prostate cancer, so I had a reasonably good idea what to expect.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Two years ago I hadn't even thought of the Woman in White, and I was doing a television show and I said I hadn't found a story and the next day somebody rang me and said have you ever thought of the Woman in White.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Nobody seems to think it's a good idea to mention mistakes, but I think it's important to acknowledge the mistakes you've made in life, because it's really through those that you learn things. I've made hundreds ...”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“No matter what they tell you, no matter what they do, no matter what they teach you, what you believe is true.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

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.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

When people ask me if musical theatre should be taught in music colleges, I reply that there is no need. All anyone needs to study is the second act of La Boheme because it is the most tightly constructed piece of musical theatre that there is. It is practically director-proof: you can't stage it badly because it just works too well. If you can write La Boheme, you can write anything. I would also recommend studying Britten's Peter Grimes.

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Love can make a summer fly, or a night seem like a lifetime.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Think of me, think of me fondly When we've said goodbye Remember me once in a while Please promise me, you'll try ... Recall those days, look back on all those times Think of those things we'll never do There will never be a day When I won't think of you ... Can it be? Can it be Christine ... Long ago, it seems so long ago How young and innocent we were She may not remember me But I remember her”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“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.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber

“I think it's probably, musically, probably the most sophisticated. ("The Woman in White") There's a lot more daring harmony in it than in some of my pieces ... If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask, isn't it? ... Sondheim is absolutely wonderful and Alan Jay Lerner was wonderful.”

— Andrew Lloyd Webber