Quotes from Leslie Odom, Jr.

I've dedicated more than 15 years to this theater and television thing; I want to spend the next 10, 15 years or so devoted to music.

I think it was, my parents got me a karaoke machine when I was about 9 years old. Even before that, they got me a tape recorder that I used to walk around my life with. And there was something about recording and then hearing myself back.

Nothing lasts forever in my profession.

I feel like every night, when you see a really good production of 'Romeo and Juliet' or something, you should hope that it ends differently. That's why we watch our favorite movies again and again.

You gotta prove yourself. I'm not above that. I will never be above that. Bring it!

It is said an artist spends their whole life trying to get to the place where their heart was first opened up. 'Rent' was that place for me.

There's this Frank Wildhorn tune 'Sarah' - it's not a widely known tune, but it's my favorite song to sing.

We want to pull out songs from the American song book, and we want to make them palatable for a modern audience.

The time I spent in New York when I was 17 gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams with my whole heart.

You gotta love this thing. Whatever you choose to pursue - medicine, law, writing, you have to love it. You study it, you eat it, you drink it, you try it, you do it, you love it in every way.

I have a great foundation, a great training foundation. But it took me a long time to let the training go.

What's a better foundation for drama? You have power, you have ambition, you have sex... that's the stuff of drama.

There are certainly people who have committed horrific, evil acts in the history of humanity. I don't think Aaron Burr's one of them.

The bad guys have way more fun, in my opinion. 'Bad guys' in quotes.

The record company felt wisely that we should get something out before I left 'Hamilton' or around awards time, and that deadline was not easy.

None of us get to divorce ourselves from the world. We walk into the theater and bring all of our grief and our pain and our joy with us.

What goes up must come down; I'm not going to be in 'Hamilton' forever. Everything I work on won't have this kind of success.

I know it's hard for people to imagine a time when 'Hamilton' wasn't 'Hamilton,' but for years, it was just this little thing that I was telling people about that didn't make any sense to anybody as I was describing it. But I loved it.

'Hamilton' has restored my faith in theater.

I think for a lot of us, you know, what 'Hamilton' gave us the opportunity to, what it gave me the opportunity to do, was to go, 'Here's what I've learned in 35 years.'

I had no vision of me being a part of that show ever. But I was committed to being the first super-fan of 'The Hamilton Mixtape' that there ever was. I was in love with this thing.

Oh, Alexander Hamilton fell short of his best self every now and again, and he still managed to do these wonderful things - well, so do I. So what am I capable of?

I remember when I was in 'Rent,' Daphne Rubin-Vega threw a party. At the time, she had a loft in TriBeCa, and the elevator opened right into her apartment. I was like, 'I've never seen anything like that.' I didn't know it was possible.

I'm glad things worked out the way they worked out.