My life has been many examples of shortsighted goals that I thought would fix things. You know, if there's something broken inside me, if there's a hole in there, I thought: If I could just write a good song someday, then I'd be OK. You know, if I could just be on stage in front of people I'd never seen before and be validated by them.
When I'm singing, that's all me. That's from the bottom of my heart - it's everything I've worked for. When you're on stage, there are no guidelines. No one's telling me what to do!
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.
There's never been an entertainer that can take two warring parties and have both presidents stand on the stage and hold hands.
Of all the many leaders I have met in the course of my life, none made a deeper impression on me than Nelson Mandela. His courage, compassion, humility and wisdom were without parallel on the world stage, and he himself was an enduring source of inspiration.
There's nothing more fun than being out on stage and getting the vibe from the crowd. There's nothing like being on a set where you are there to make other people happy and to make them laugh. That's the best job in the world.
When I'm with my kids, I feel like that's really me. And when we're on stage, I feel that, too.
I've watched the Emmys for almost my whole life, so it was crazy to finally be there in the audience clapping and actually going on stage. Hopefully one day I'll get to be actually nominated.
When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.
China is developing very quickly. At every stage, its needs are different.
One of my favorite things to do, when the ghost light is on and it's just an empty stage - I'll let my shadow spread right across the theater, and I just say to myself, 'For the next few hours, these folks are my responsibility. I get to share in something that is unique.' It's like church.
I can drink on the job if I want to. I can go on stage with a beer and it's OK. I can say whatever I want. It's a great job to have.
What I enjoy most about being on stage is that the natural instruments give you a greater freedom with texture. When you use natural instruments they have their own resonance.
Dancing is my number one love. That was my first goal as a child. I would love to do stage, maybe do Chicago. I love being in front of an audience. It's so stimulating. I also love to barbecue.
I mean, I guess I realized subconsciously that this is what I should be doing before I realized it, consciously. Verbally, I don't think I had committed to it, even though I was driving everywhere, every night, just trying to get on stage.
I began acting on stage when I was 7 years old. My first role was as Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' at Chicago's Center on Deafness in Northbrook, Illinois.
How little the public realizes what a girl must go through before she finally appears before the spotlight that is thrown upon the stage.
When I was a child I wanted to be a petrol pump attendant. I suppose you have all sorts of thoughts as a child and at the time I figured that it was a way to avoid doing anything like going on stage.
I've always felt that in a comedy script the stage directions should also have a comedic value.
I'd seen my dad on stage, and that was fine, but the real excitement was - that was my dad. Even now, when I see his films, he's always my favourite person in the movie.
The studio is just a labor. Getting on stage is the reward.
If what you do is being threatened as a profession, that could be scary. But that's the same reason why I walked out on stage many times after receiving death threats. I couldn't live without doing what I wanted to do. So at the same time I have to be willing to die for it.
I wanted to be a ballerina as a child - I had a tutu, and I used to stage my own ballets in our front room with my family as the audience.
I loved my time doing 'Private Practice' in Los Angeles, and I was quite challenged and excited to learn about the art of television, but I missed being on the stage.
When you have an engagement, at least in my world, the world that I create for myself, an engagement doesn't begin when you hit the stage and end when you leave the stage. It begins when you hit the city limits, and it ends when you leave the city limits.
My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.
I return to the stage time and again to see if I am worth anything.
One night Roger was in a foul mood and he threw his entire bloody drumset across the stage. The thing only just missed me - I might have been killed.
I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I'm ready, whether it's rehearsal or anything.
You get those couples who are very fearful of bringing children into the mix because they feel like somehow that link between them as a couple is going to somehow dissolve or become less powerful or whatever. And that somehow the child is going to disrupt their happy stage.
The theatre starts every night at half past seven, and I like the rhythm of going to the theatre, parking the car, going to the stage door; I've grown up with all of that. I'd love to do more theatre - I mean, I shouldn't be telling the world that I can't remember lines any more, but I find it more and more difficult, so I don't know.
Tyranny is increasingly unsustainable in this post-cold-war era. It is doomed to failure. But it must be prodded to exit the stage with a whimper - not the bang that extremists long for.
I probably don't look healthy, but I have never got to the stage where I thought I was going to pass out.
I read somewhere that when I go on stage, people realize that they're not me and they feel better. When I walk off the stage, people know who I really am. I'm not saying it's great comedy, cool comedy or better comedy - but that's what I do, and I do it first for myself.
I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. Johnny Tam is the first one.
I think one of the things that attracted me about theater and the stage was the ability to escape reality. And that is what I do in my work as a writer, but in a different way. And the freedom to put your own existence on ice and become another person.
