[STEPHEN SONDHEIM, spoken]
To me, teaching is a sacred profession
My life was shaped by teachers
First by a Latin teacher in prep school
Then by a man called Robert Barrow
Who taught music at Williams College and made me a musician
And then my postgraduate studies with Milton Babbitt
And then of course my collaborators
And I suppose, above all, Oscar
Who taught me virtually everything I know about songwriting
And a good deal about life

Just before he died
He gave me a picture of himself, and I asked him to inscribe it
Which is sort of odd, becausе he was a surrogate father to mе
It's like asking your father to inscribe a picture
And he thought for a minute, and he was clearly a little embarrassed
And then he got a smile on his face, like the cat had just eaten the cream
And he wrote something
And when he left the room I looked at it
And it said, "For Stevie, my friend and teacher"
That's a measure of Oscar
He was a remarkable fellow