Top 60 Daveed Diggs Quotes

Often, the people I’m working with on music are separate from the rest of my life.

That’s the great thing about how ‘SVU’ works. They work with so many Broadway actors, they are very used to getting us out in time for the show.

There’s a lot of spaces that care about what kids are buying. There are a lot of spaces that care about what kids are watching. But there aren’t a lot of spaces that care about what kids are saying.

I didn’t aspire to be on Broadway.

I get to say ‘no’ to a lot of things. That, for an artist, is crazy.

I didn’t know a single musical soundtrack, really, growing up. Nobody listened to musicals. That wasn’t a thing I did.

My parents are not together, but they were both always around.

I think people understand I’m not actually the real Thomas Jefferson.

We’re very used to seeing a huge diversity of white people. You never just expect two white people on TV to feel the same way.

I’m from the Bay Area, so I know a lot about granola.

It wasn’t until I got out in the world and started worked professionally when I realized that the people I admired were the ones who had taken the little snippets of what they learned that worked for them – and strung them together in their own technique.

I love that ‘Black-ish’ is a pretty traditional sitcom, structurally. It functions like the sitcoms from the ’80s and ’90s that I grew up with.

Being multiracial has allowed me to feel comfortable walking in all different circles.

Acting is about finding truth and finding the way to convey the truth.

I can jump really high, yeah. I’m proud of that. I’ll take it.

Recording vocals has the same kind of physical demands as you experience a lot in theater work.

I feel like, anytime I’m onstage, I tend to feel very connected with people in the audience or with the sort of heartbeat or tempo of the audience.

At some point, I’ll do more McDonald’s commercials if I have to.

Learning how to get a point across is pretty useful in any situation.

I’m fascinated with the regionality of rap music.

I get excited to create things that don’t exist in the same world as ‘Hamilton’ because that world is really well done and doesn’t need me to inform it anymore.

Hip-hop was indifferent to Broadway. We didn’t need Broadway, but I think Broadway needed hip-hop.

Broadway was weird.

Writing is writing. It is all about telling stories, and I’ve been doing that for so long, in all realms, that it all feels like the same thing to me anyway.

I was really aware, even while it was happening, that the discovery of arts education in my life sort of saved my life.

To walk into a casting room full of people who look like you is a crazy thing. What is the thing that necessitates all of us having the exact same shade of skin and having the same hair? What about this deodorant commercial needs that?

I have all of Kendrick Lamar on vinyl.

If a project feels good to you, say yes. And do it with everything that you have and hope that the outcome is good.

I was so stressed, man. When I was 17, I was so worried about what the hell was going to happen.

I liked being on stage because it gave me a reason to be around people. The other great thing about acting is it allows you to imagine circumstances different from your own. I was a poor Bay Area kid getting to pretend to be a Russian aristocrat.

There’s this thing about authenticity when you rap, right? Whether or not it’s real, it has to feel real.

I’m aware that not everybody gets that feeling of ease walking through the world that I have.

I call myself a nerd all the time.

The fact that rap has a strict meter and stays to a click means that you have to make your thoughts concise.

I warm up a lot harder for a Clipping show than I ever did for ‘Hamilton.’

I’ve always been a fan of ‘Black-ish.’

Being with a bunch of people who never take a day off means that you’re not taking a day off.

The tricky thing about fast raps is not really the delivery of them; it’s the writing of them, with consonants close enough together that you don’t trip up over them.

I’ve always been very supported. I’ve never really been sad. I’ve just been broke. They are very different things.

If you do enough rap shows, you get a pretty good sense of an audience. You start to develop this sense of what a feeling of a room or a group is.

I have a recognizable silhouette.

As more doors open for me, I try to always bring people who I know through.

History is about who tells it.

I’ve always gravitated toward technical music in general. I love jazz fusion.

Being an emcee onstage is mostly about crowd control, about monitoring energy levels.

I think this idea of a big break is a lie.

Being on stage, I know my function. I just do the thing.

Everybody from the Bay has a superiority complex because we’re dope.

Writing rap songs is about flow, about one word blending seamlessly into the next and creating a thing that is possible to perform in a way that feels natural.

I have this thing. I can rap really fast. I can rap really, really fast. It’s a thing I’m good at and I’ve trained myself to do; it’s a thing I do in the Bay Area.

Neither of my parents live in Oakland anymore. They both got priced out.

The act of being nice to somebody at Starbucks is actually a huge thing. It’s a real change you can effect in somebody’s life every day.

What writing a poem really does – and what figuring how to perform effectively really does – is forces people to listen to you. It frames your thoughts in such a way that grabs people’s attentions and forces them to hear the things that you’re actually saying.

My favorite Prince album is ‘Sign o’ the Times.’

It’s funny because as a rapper, there is – and this is something that Clipping challenges all the time – there is this idea about authenticity as a rapper, in the fact that you rap things that are yours. That’s not what doing a play is. You’re interpreting somebody else’s words.

As a kid, I was very shy.

The fact that I got to do the ‘Hamilton’ BET Cypher is a totally crazy thing because I’ve watched the BET Cyphers since it started. I’ve seen every one. I study them. Because I’m a rapper. It’s what you do.

I sort of have this feeling about change in general. We can make baby steps on a macro level. We can try to shift policy, voting and changing who’s in office. But we can make huge, sweeping changes on a personal level and in your immediate circle, or just the people around you.

All the way on the West Coast, never having seen a Broadway show, it was like, ‘They don’t want me. There’s nothing there for me.’ I’d come to New York a lot and never even tried to see a Broadway show. There was no reason for me to do that.

The way we make history exciting to learn about is by breaking down the barriers that are already set up between these people.