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 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.
If Hamilton were on Twitter, he would have been a worse oversharer than me.
Everything we know about Hamilton, we knew when he was alive, because he told us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. We just knew the rule was you're going to have to work twice as hard.
The only shows I saw as a kid were that holy trinity: 'Les Miz,' 'Cats,' 'Phantom.'
If there is a Busta Rhymes of musical theater, it probably is Mandy Patinkin.
The musicals that leave us kind of staggering on our feet are the ones that really reach for a lot.
I only know how to write musicals.
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.
'Rent' was the show that made me want to write. Or that showed me you're allowed to write.
Making words rhyme for a living is one of the great joys of my life... That's a superpower I've been very conscious of developing. I started at the same level as everybody else, and then I just listened to more music and talked to myself until it was an actual superpower I could pull out on special occasions.
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.
