David Friedman

“For Hunchback, we needed this live, gigantic choir. So we went to London and said, This is Disney! I need singers who can sing high D's, hold them for 18 seconds, and do it 60 times!”

“It sometimes feels like I'm not doing anything.”

“I've been doing my big theater projects, which take years, and writing a song here and there.”

“Composition is definitely what I'm born to do, and it came last.”

“When I got to Broadway, I conducted five Broadway shows.”

“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.”

“I've been doing a lot of studying singing, and I'm thinking of recording an album containing all my old war horses and putting out a songbook at the same time.”

“There is no seam between my songs and myself-they really are me. It's not like I'm performing; I'm just singing stuff that I really believe.”

“I know a lot of people who have tremendous commercial success and they go directly for it. There's something that has always been difficult about that for me.”

“I'm trying to have everything that I put into the world be something that makes a difference in the way I want to make a difference.”

“I wanted to produce Nancy LaMott's albums, so I created my own record company.”

“I'm not comfortable singing in front of people yet. That's going to take another 100 performances.”

“Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there.”