Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.

Sondheim’s remark frames art less as decoration or self-expression than as a disciplined act of shaping experience. “Chaos” can mean the rawness of emotion, the mess of lived events, or the unruly abundance of possible choices; “order” is the pattern an artist imposes through selection, structure, and craft. The phrase “in itself” suggests this is art’s intrinsic function regardless of medium—songwriting, theater, painting, or prose. Read this way, the quote also defends technique: form is not a constraint but the means by which meaning becomes communicable. It aligns with Sondheim’s reputation for meticulous construction—turning complex feelings and narratives into coherent musical-dramatic architecture.