Quotes from Leslie Odom, Jr.

I've spent a long time learning my way around a stage as an actor, but this I don't know as well. Humbly, I'm excited to get with a band and perform regularly as an artist and see what I can learn and how I can grow in that space.

My dad was an early hip-hop fan.

I haven't gotten hundreds of jobs that I've auditioned for.

None of us wants to be judged by our worst act on our worst day, and we consistently judge Burr for that. He was not a perfect man, but he's not a villain. He's a dude, just a guy.

I know what not being able to pay your bills feels like real well... I know that way better than a room full of beautiful people and Tony awards and Grammy awards.

They're people who had flaws and who had affairs and had sex and had scandals, and very rarely do we look at the totality of our heroes' lives.

I have to remind myself that it may never be this good again.

'Rent' opened up my heart, my senses. I was never the same. I hadn't been back in that place in the same way since. 'Hamilton' put me back in that place.

I can only imagine what the show would have meant to me as a 16- or 17-year-old. I know what 'Rent' meant to me in my life, how that show changed the course of my life, and we can only hope that 'Hamilton' will have the same effect on a few kids.

There was a lot of the 'Hamilton' experience that was like a locomotive. It was a hurricane, so the apartment often looked like a hurricane. There were clothes and shoes all over. We were getting more things in than we had room for. We had to figure out how to make space for all the blessings and goodness coming toward us.

I know what it's like to be ignored; when I got to L.A., I longed for somebody who looked like me to show me the ropes.

My dad was always in sales. My mom had a heart for the ages. Worked in recreation, doing rehabilitation in nursing homes. Very nice, practical folks who were very proud of me but had no inclination toward the stage in any way.

That was the bat signal for me - 'Rent' changed my life. It took me years before I got beyond that show.

I wanted to make an album that was hopeful and encouraging and inspiring. That was the goal.

I've done a lot of translation in TV, and I can do it. I'm trained to do it. I know how to inject a certain amount of my naturalness into that and where I come from into those things, but it helps if somebody's writing with my experience in mind.

When we go and cheer Cynthia Erivo on in 'The Color Purple,' it's because we've elected her to be our voice. She sings 'I'm Here' for all of us.

I'm in no way running from 'Hamilton' or its success or these beautiful songs that I've been blessed to be able to be the one to introduce them. I certainly won't be the last to sing them, but to be the first, I feel very lucky.

I got my Equity Card with my Broadway debut when I did 'Rent.' I was in high school, and I came to New York to do that show.

You can't judge the people that you play anyway; you leave that for somebody else to do.

I want to know that I'm gonna knock 'em dead every night.

I started out with this 'La Boheme' fantasy, but as you get older, the 'La Boheme' fantasy becomes less sexy, believe me.

I've been involved with 'Hamilton' for about two and a half years. I've learned so much. I came into it a young man. Now I've dropped the 'young.'

I don't have any control over the offers that are going to come to me or not come to me. But I can't go backward, and so that's what's tricky.

What is the future going to say about us now? What are our kids going to look at us and say, 'How could you not stop that person from getting into power? How could you not stop that environmental disaster that you saw coming a mile away?'