Mitch Leigh

“Not exactly what the world was looking for, a musical on 'Don Quixote.' It was required reading in high school.”

“There's more musical freedom on Madison Avenue than anywhere else. It's an Eden for a composer.”

“You can't make money on advertising; you just have to seed the clouds. What you're after is word of mouth.”

“When I left Yale, I was prepared to write anything.”

“I was in the army, and I had given up the thought of being a composer.”

“It's still word of mouth that is going to make or break a show, and while critics can't help a show, they can hurt it.”

“I grew up in Brownsville; most of the kids I grew up with went to jail, not Yale. If they had heard of Yale, they thought it was a lock to pick.”

“I think if you see that no one is going to laugh at you for it, I think the concept of living nicely will be infectious. I believe there is room for the absence of cynicism.”

“I'll write anything; I don't want to judge its form.”

“If I do what I really want to do, I'm not going to do a typical commercial Broadway show, so I'm going to write what I want to write.”

“If you're not a nice person, don't call.”

“'La Mancha' was a gift from me to me. I never thought for a minute it was going to be a hit.”

“When you think of Mitch Leigh as a businessman, remember he's also a composer. And when you think of Mitch Leigh as a composer, remember he's also a businessman.”

“You have to do what is real and what is right and what is good and what you believe in. It doesn't mean it's always going to work. It doesn't. But when it does, it is truthful and forever.”

“To call somebody a Jewish composer is obviously redundant.”

“The old joke was Mitch Leigh, land baron, barren land.”

“My advice to singers is always the same: 'Don't sing the song, sing the lyric.'”

“New York is really the cheapest ad market. When I go on TV, I'm hitting a country. The market is as big as some countries, you know.”

“If one wants to go on living, one must evolve. Before, when we composed, we would start by a series of music themes. Once created, we would hire writers and lyricists to make up the text and the story line. I was the first to do this backwards with 'Man of La Mancha.'”

“I applied to Yale, and I got in.”