Andrew Lloyd Webber

I've often thought that we left the original 'Phantom' with a little bit of a cliff hanger, and I thought, 'Well, why not to do a sequel to it' at one point.

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.

If you look at my career... I couldn't possibly have chosen those subjects if I was thinking, 'That's a great commercial idea.' I'm not aware of a great musical where someone has done that.

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.

There's no getting around it: Writing is hard, while working with young performers is nearly always a joy.

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.

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.

I'm alive. I have my music; I have my children. I am the luckiest man.

I wonder what would have happened if automation and computers had existed when 'Oklahoma!' was having its out-of-town try-out, and three days before closing in Boston, when it was still called 'Away We Go,' they added a new song called 'Oklahoma!' I don't think that could happen today. It's almost impossible to change musicals on the go now.

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.

I haven't written a score that's going to change the Western world or the musical as we presently know it.

It's interesting that the wondrous 'Hamilton,' which I could not be more ecstatic about, has taken a long time to perfect to bring it to Broadway. And it wouldn't have been possible if it was developed in the commercial theatre from the get-go.