Quotes from Leslie Odom, Jr.

Making $1,260 a week at 17 years old? That was a million dollars a week to me!

Josh Gad was in my class. Katy Mixon. Griffin Matthews. Josh Groban - he ended up leaving to become a huge star, but he was in our class in freshman year. I remember Josh was this nerdy kid in a turtleneck with a voice from heaven.

I remember Ella Fitzgerald sort of coming into my life like a bolt of lightning - like, what is that? It was one of the purest examples of God in art that I'd ever seen.

When I see the black experience - there's not one, but it is specific, and you can't ignore it.

We didn't go to Broadway musicals when I was growing up; it was too expensive.

I'm the nap champion.

At 14, 15 years old, I started reading 'Backstage' regularly. Eventually, I got enough courage to look at the auditions section.

It's still a political statement to stand on stage as a person of color and be excellent. We still need those images to combat the narrative we're often fed - as someone innately inferior or inexorably linked with lack.

It's about polarization. You're trying to stir up something in your audience.

It's not about doing something that's as big as 'Hamilton.' That may never happen again, and that's okay.

We're reminded yet again: we are stronger, we are smarter, we have more fun when we include each other - when we include as many perspectives as possible.

The only reason to keep talking about history is if you are juxtaposing it with the world that we live in today, if you are learning something about our world by looking at the way they shaped their world.

I think I spent most of my childhood, and my early years as a performer, in student mode. And I think that's OK - I mean, it led me to where I am.

I was a good student; I was a good boy. I got A's, and I did all the papers right.

I think art, at its best, happens on a conscious and a subconscious level.

I'm addicted to growth.

If you're an open channel when you're onstage, if you're just a vessel, things are going to come out that are stored away deep in your DNA.