Leslie Odom

“I grew up in the Canaan Baptist Church.”

“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.”

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

“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'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.”

“What a casting director does is they're a connector.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Donny Hathaway's 'For All We Know' is the song that I've sung the longest. It is a beautiful song about living in the moment and appreciating this very second. That is the song I did for my 'Rent' audition.”

“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 kind of think we sort of subconsciously draw things into our lives, whatever we're trying to work through.”

“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.”

“I don't want to leave anything offstage.”

“To get even realer with you for a second, as a black actor, as a performer of color, I don't know how many more roles like Aaron Burr are gonna come along for me.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”