A biography for Leslie Odomhasn’t been written yet.
“It's about polarization. You're trying to stir up something in your audience.”
“You can't judge the people that you play anyway; you leave that for somebody else to do.”
“I grew up in Philadelphia in a time where we took it for granted that we were supposed to be young and gifted and black. It was a culture of excellence - and all my friends were more talented than I was.”
“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'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.”
“'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.”
“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.”
“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'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'm the nap champion.”
“I think that the best songs to sing are songs that you love, because you sing them with love when you love them.”
“Until you make a name for yourself, they're like, 'Be a little more Denzel,' 'Be a little more Wesley Snipes.'”
“That was the bat signal for me - 'Rent' changed my life. It took me years before I got beyond that show.”
“Nothing lasts forever in my profession.”
“I have a great foundation, a great training foundation. But it took me a long time to let the training go.”