A biography for Leslie Odomhasn’t been written yet.
“My dad was an early hip-hop fan.”
“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.”
“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.”
“All I try to do is put as many colors as I can on the canvas every night.”
“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.”
“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.”
“There's this Frank Wildhorn tune 'Sarah' - it's not a widely known tune, but it's my favorite song to sing.”
“I started out with this 'La Boheme' fantasy, but as you get older, the 'La Boheme' fantasy becomes less sexy, believe me.”
“I've realized along the way that a lot of things that I do as a performer are about waiting for somebody to write something for me or develop something for me, but music, music was the thing that I don't have to wait for anybody's permission to do.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I studied at Carnegie Mellon. I went there with a bunch of really, really talented kids.”
“I have to remind myself that it may never be this good again.”
“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 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.'”
“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.”
“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.”
“'Hamilton' has restored my faith in theater.”
“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.”
“The time I spent in New York when I was 17 gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams with my whole heart.”