Top 60 Leslie Odom, Jr. Quotes

I’m addicted to growth.

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.

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.

Sometimes I think of creativity or art as this well that we all draw from.

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

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

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

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.

I grew up in the Canaan Baptist Church.

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.

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.

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’ve been in a long-term relationship, and I’ll tell you, it’s never boring! People trying to merge their lives together always run into challenges.

I grew up in Philadelphia.

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

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.

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.

If I’m allowed it, I’m really looking forward to a little time on the couch and a little time on a beach in Brazil.

I’m the nap champion.

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 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.

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.

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

People are coming to you at their most vulnerable; they’re showing you the parts of themselves that they’re afraid to show: the parts that they’re not so sure about, not so secure in. And so it’s a really holy profession I think, teaching. If you do it right, it can change somebody’s life.

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

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.

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.

As an artist, I’m very used to waking up and sort of not knowing what my day’s going to be and not knowing where my next paycheck is going to come from.

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.

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.

‘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 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.’

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.

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?’

I’m so excited about my new partnership with the talented and motivated team at S-Curve Records!

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

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

We don’t get to get swept up, because we have to start over every day at 8 o’clock.

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.

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

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

I’ve been fortunate in my life. It hasn’t been easy, but there has been a focus on the positive, and it has reverberated. Eventually, the outlook mirrors itself back to you in the friends you have, in the partner that you choose.

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

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

Until you make a name for yourself, they’re like, ‘Be a little more Denzel,’ ‘Be a little more Wesley Snipes.’

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.’

When I step on the stage and sing ‘Wait for It,’ I’m singing that for everybody. I don’t mean I’m singing it for them; I mean, you are their voice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You must be an artist and a citizen of the world. You must speak to this stuff that’s happening. You must do what you can to shine a light on it, help people through it.

You hear a song like ‘Wait For It,’ you hear a song like ‘Dear Theodosia’ – if you get one of those songs in a musical – one – it’s worth dropping everything to sing that one song.

Nothing lasts forever in my profession.

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 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.

My dad was an early hip-hop fan.

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

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.

I studied at Carnegie Mellon. I went there with a bunch of really, really talented kids.