Leslie Odom Jr. Quotes

I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.

The fact that it's hard to create an original British musical doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

There's a consistency in my work that pops up independent of the limitations of the technology.

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.

Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

Obsession remains the price of creation, and the writer who declines that risk will come up with nothing more creative than 'The Foxes of Harrow' or 'Mrs. Parkington.'

There was so much on 'Superstar' that we didn't intend. I mean, there were things that we did which were innovative, but some of them were forced on us because we couldn't get anybody to do the show. 'Evita' was much more sophisticated. That doesn't make it better, but it does make it different. We knew what we were doing.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

I want to bring art into everything.

All our forms are unique - movies, music and literature - and you have to leave the person who is doing it to do their best.

More than often, what you see, or what we've been able to recreate, has usually been a tampered-with version of what I have in my head, because the original idea has always been bigger. Every time I am in the mode of creating a show, there's always some level of gravity that comes in play, either of a monetary sort, or there's a space issue.

We're all inspired by what has come before us, but hope to use the inspiration to create our own. That's the artist's journey. It's a pretty amazing path.

The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.

It's always nice to have people love the things that you do. But it's a lot of hard work, and people are always passionate, if it's family fare or a drama, it's the same amount of work and people invest everything into that, and when it doesn't come out the way you want it to, of course it's hurtful.

Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don't have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.

Normal people do not create art.

If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me. So let's have no talk of temperamental, self-absorbed and petulant babies. Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on. I love them all.

There are, it seems, two muses: The Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, 'It is yet more difficult than you thought.' It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

This industry's so full of distractions: partying, drinking, sex, money. The priority for me is just to make music that people can connect with. I want to make something fresh that people may not understand

I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves.

Everyone who enjoys supposes that the tree was concerned with the fruit, but it was really concerned with the seed. -In this lies the difference between all those who create and those who enjoy.

There's a responsibility to the story, but there's also the sense of fun you have. When everybody else leaves, you get to continue to create. For me, there's no other way! I really like creating from the ground up.

The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture.

Is it an original idea? Or is it something where you're literally a creative collagist? You're taking pieces of the world that you see around you and that are inside of you and put them together in a way that you see fit.