Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
With every word, I drop knowledge. I'm a diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal trying to reach my goal.
I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. We just knew the rule was you're going to have to work twice as hard.
I feel like style is like accent. You don't hear it on yourself, and then everyone's like, man, you got a strong accent.
I know the action in the street is excitin' But Jesus, between all the bleedin’ ‘n fightin’ I’ve been readin’ ‘n writin’.
I had friends who only listened to hip-hop. I had friends who only listened to musicals, and I stood proudly in the middle.
I try to let my decisions be guided not by what I think will succeed or fail, but what I'm going to learn from that process.
If you know the voice you're writing for it's such a shortcut. It's such a catalyst to creating the kind of energy you want.
Pretty much anything William Shatner is in is great. He's great at playing that 'I'm the only one sane in the world' character.
I'm the music guy, I get to wear the music hat, but being able to be that guy in the room is a thrill at this level and caliber.
In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.
Biggie and Big Pun were the best storytellers of the '90s. I would get wrapped up in the narrative of what they were talking about.
Lamplighters are the guys who manually turned on all the street lamps in London and turned them off. That was the gig in the 1930s in London.
The music you love when you're a teenager is always going to be the most important to you, and I find that it's all over the score of 'Hamilton.'
If you're thinking about the idea in the shower. If you're thinking about the idea while you're walking your dog, there's probably something to it.
Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.
We love 'Fiddler.' We love 'West Side Story.' I want to be in that club. I want to be in the club that writes the musical that every high school does.
Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.
What I learned from my go-round with 'In the Heights' is that it's tough to make a movie. In Hollywood, even the people in charge have people in charge.
What's incredible about 'Hamilton,' and the reason you can't get a ticket, is because everyone's responding to it. Everyone is seeing a bit of themselves in it.
When I get called in for stuff for Hollywood, I get to be the best friend of the Caucasian leadIf I want to play the main guy, I have found, I have to write it.
I think I started writing because no one had ever told me you can write about the things you know in a musical. They don't have to come from some far off place.
I like the quiet it takes to pursue an idea the way I pursued 'Hamilton,' but I couldn't write a book, because there's no applause at the end of writing a book.
I loved musicals. I loved being in the school play and being lucky enough to get parts in the school play. But they always took place in some other time and place.
When I was asked to do a song from 'In the Heights' at the White House in 2009, I chose instead to do 'Alexander Hamilton' because I felt like I was meeting a moment.
These New York City streets get colder, I shoulder every burden every disadvantage I've learned to manage. I don't have a gun to brandish. I walk these streets famished.
The reason I make that distinction cassette before CD is you have to listen to it in the order in which I've curated it for you. You know, side A to side B is our act break.
I'm not trying to make something that is difficult to perform every night. It needs to proceed at the speed of that character's thought because that's the only way it's actable.
I was one of several songwriters I think interviewed [for Moana]. I'm a huge fan of Disney animated movies, and I've always wanted to write an animated score since I was a little kid.
People who don't like musicals like, 'why are they singing? Why aren't they just talking? If you make the lyric feel really conversational, it's much easier for them to bridge that gap.
In 'Hamilton,' we're telling the stories of old, dead white men, but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience.
I think if you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time. And that's a great way to make a writer.
I'm not going to hang out with celebrities, I'm not going to parties. I have two songs due for Moana next week, and I'm going to go and spend some time with Maui and Moana in the ocean, in my mind.
Because of the success of 'Hamilton' and 'On Your Feet!' you can't hide behind the old argument of, 'It needs to be bankable, so we can't put all these people of color in the show.' We are bankable.
I came up with the "We are explorers," with sort of a counter-melody to [Opetaia Foa'i] melody. And so, it happened so organically, that it really, to me, is the most emblematic of our collaboration.
The only other thing that's like video games for me is watching tennis on TV. I can have it on, and there's a rhythmic quality to it - I can be watching Wimbledon or the U.S. Open and still be working.
You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, I didn't do any press, I didn't do any meetings, I just wrote all day, 'cause I'd meet, via Skype, with the creative team, at five p.m., and then I would have my seven o'clock curtain.
I got the job [in Moana project] about six months before we started rehearsals. No, seven and a half months before we started at the Public, and so, it's been my ocean of calm throughout the Hamilton phenomenon.
I think one of the things that makes theater special is first of all, it's one of the last places you put your phone away. And second of all, it's one of the last places where we all have a common experience together.
I felt so nourished by the process of making [Moana], of you're always engaged with other artists from different disciplines, and it's about bringing your art form to the table. It's so many art forms mashed together.
I always had an eye toward the stage for the story of Hamilton's life, but I began with the idea of a concept album, the way Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' were albums before they were musicals.
It's got to feel, the pulse has to feel like this part of the world, the instrumentation has to be true to that, and so, between him, [composer] Mark Mancina and myself, we really chased that, while serving our story Moana].
I think you balance the things you've been dying to do all your life. And the opportunities that come along, that you didn't maybe think of, that are so amazing, that you'd kick yourself if you didn't try to be a part of them.
I think I'm always subconsciously trying to write the ideal school play. Lots of parts for everybody, great parts for women - don't forget, more girls try out than boys in the school play; everyone gets to be in the school play.
[Opetaia Foa'i] brought in the melody and the lyrics, but the lyrics were in Tokelauan, and so, we talked about what it could mean and whether this could be the ancestor song. So, I started writing English lyrics to sort of the same melody.
I think, there are a couple of songs. I'm really proud of How far I'll Go. I literally locked myself up in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house to write those lyrics. I wanted to get to my angstiest possible place. So I went method on that.
There's been lots of theater that uses hip-hop in it, but more often than not, it's used as a joke - isn't it hilarious that these characters are rapping. I treat it as a musical form, and a musical form that allows you to pack in a ton of lyric.
My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.
I want as many people to see the show [Hamilton] in its musical theater form as possible before it's translated, and whether it's a good act of translation or a bad act of translation, it's a leap, and very few stage shows manage the leap successfully.
The reason 'Hamilton' works is because there is no distance between that story that happened 200-some-odd years ago and now, because it looks like America now. It helps create a connection that wouldn't have been there if it was 20 white guys on stage.