Christopher Jackson

Our understanding of history goes awry when we only tell one part of the story.

If you look back throughout the history of Broadway, there's always been periods where writers and producers have delivered the kind of things that people want to see, while at the same time pushing the form along.

Tupac was the first artist that I really related to.

Jazz is all about being in the moment. Whatever the music is making you feel, jazz gives you the freedom. That's the same genesis as hip-hop.

Being a part of the 'Hamilton' family has been the most thrilling and rewarding experience of my career.

Hamilton' is as hard a job as anything I've ever done. It's equally rewarding, but it's very taxing. It's just so hard physically and emotionally to do it, and it just empties you out.

Because for every Lin Miranda performance, there's some young person out there saying, 'Oh, I can write something like this.' Or, 'I didn't think that this was possible.' It opens a world of possibilities.

One of the beautiful parts about Hamilton is it takes these figures that we've always revered as figures of antiquity and there's real blood flowing through their veins. There's real conflict. There's real life.

To me there's nothing more fascinating than a roomful of young people just trying to look at the world and seeing how they can affect it as they're being affected by it.

I approach most every job that I do with some sort of team ideal involved.

I get great joy from being a part of a play that doesn't take itself too seriously.

If an artist doesn't have anything to say, he'll be quiet. Or he'll yell into the darkness until he finds something and hears something back.

I knew I wanted to be in the arts and acting.

If you can save one body, and one heart and soul and mind, then it's a worthy cause and a worthy venture.

The idea that you can make one speech or one movie, or express a thought or show the injustice of a particular time, you hope that it resonates, and you hope that resonance will last. You hope that it would create change.

You can make the most powerful movie ever made, and you hope that whatever resonates gets taken home and survives the night. You also hope that, the next morning, it gives someone pause before they would act on their more base instincts, or out of habit.

My most important jobs are to be a father and a husband, and so some things have to wait.

When I was doing 'In the Heights,' I was the co-music supervisor for 'The Electric Company' on PBS, so I was writing songs all day, doing the show, staying up until 3 A. M. Writing more songs, recording demos in the intermission in my dressing room.

Every day is different. I've only ever been happy spinning a thousand plates at once.

I came into the business where Will Smith was pretty much taking over the world - or defending it, if you will. He was showing success on so many different fronts - television, recording, movies. So that was really my prototype in terms of looking at the business and seeing where you fit in.