Renee Elise Goldsberry

“My kids make me laugh every single day - especially when they're their most precocious. My son said to me the other day, 'Why are you so dramatic?' And I just thought, 'Really? You know that word? And also, you've already noticed how dramatic I am?' That just really made me laugh.”

“I love the opportunity to tell stories that people should know. I think it puts what we do as actors on the level of nurses and doctors. It takes us out of this idea of entertainment into an act of service.”

“I don't do lip balm. I believe hydration really comes from the inside out, so I try to drink a lot of water. I have children who are always asking for Vaseline on their lips, but I'm saying we need to drink more water.”

“The first few times I was asked to audition for the part of Angelica Schuyler in 'Hamilton,' I turned it down. I was convinced I was too over-the-hill to play a Nicki Minaj-type rapper. When I finally showed up, the role was waiting for me. But I almost missed it.”

“I've done acupuncture, and I believe in it. That's the first place I go if I'm having any particular pain anywhere.”

“It doesn't matter how late you get home or how wired you are, you still wake up early with your kids. That's the most important thing you do in a day, whether or not you're in a hit Broadway show.”

“This #MeToo world, it's not new. None of us believe it's new. It's exciting that we find ourselves with a hashtag and a movement, but in general, none of these stories are new; it's just there's an audience now, and everybody's interested in trying to be responsible about this.”

“I was so involved in the regular joy of school that I didn't do any plays. On a dare, I auditioned for 'South Pacific' my junior year. I showed up at the last minute to the audition and ended up getting cast as the lead. I haven't turned back since then.”

“'Hamilton' is a story about America, and the most beautiful thing about it is... it's told by such a diverse cast with a such diverse styles of music. We have the opportunity to reclaim a history that some of us don't necessarily think is our own.”

“We are all good at things - a varied assortment of things - and we all desperately need to find out what those things are for our self-esteem. If there is anything young people need, it is confidence and an identity and a purpose.”

“I always felt like, 'I hope Oprah teaches a class to everybody when they get super famous about how to use, responsibly, that blessing.'”

“It's a trippy and really magical experience when people like Michelle Obama are looking at you saying, 'Great job,' when all you want to do is say, 'Great job,' to the First Lady of our country.”

“I won my husband. I won my kids. I've won a lot of really great jobs. I've won a lot of friendships. I've been nominated for lots of different kinds of awards.”

“One hundred percent, all your Shakespeare training serves you in the work in musical theater today: specifically in modern musical theater, our soliloquies, and now what we call rap. It's the reason it's so easy to learn, because it's verse; it's rhyme! It just sticks in the soul very easily.”

“As a child, I loved to sing. When I was 8, my mother sent my brother and me to a summer music theater program in Texas. We did 'Guys and Dolls' at the camp, and I was so depressed when it was over. That's when I realized that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

“I've never been a stalker fan. I've always been a fan from afar.”

“For the first time in my life, in my mid-20s, I started to question things. Had I been deceived? I thought I had been destined for something great - to be Whitney Houston or Jennifer Holliday or Phylicia Rashad. I started to realize that a lot of people think that, and it doesn't happen for almost everyone.”

“My job is not to get an award. My job is to illuminate people about something that they should know.”

“There's a new Mozart, a new Miles Davis, a new Misty Copeland, a new Matisse potentially languishing in a math class somewhere. If we fail to introduce them to art, we fail humanity.”

“I wish, mainly, that I could have a job and work all the time and also not have to leave my kids. If there was a way to clone myself and be at every parent-teacher meeting and be there to put my kids to bed every single night and also star on Broadway, that's what I would do.”