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.

I'm a diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal trying to reach my goal.

I grew up in the time just when cassettes were waning and CDs were growing. And so mix tapes - and not mix CDs - mix tapes were an important part of the friendship and mating rituals of New York adolescents. If you were a girl and I wanted you - to show you I like you, I would make you a 90-minute cassette wherein I would show off my tastes. I would play you a musical theater song next to a hip-hop song next to an oldie next to some pop song you maybe never heard, also subliminally telling you how much I like you with all these songs.

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.

The music you love when you're a teenager is always going to be the most important to you.

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 read reviews, I'm not going to lie to y'all. Like you know, I'll read 'em, but then, the next day I'm able to sort of shrug them off. But if something sort of sticks the next day, there's probably something to it. I just sort of really try to trust my gut on, on all that stuff.