Top 55 Daveed Diggs Quotes

As a kid, you don’t have a ton of spaces where you are honored, where what you think is honored and what you say is revered.

I think rappers spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is new. ‘How can I say this in a way that no one has ever said it before?’

That’s what hip-hop is – it’s about meeting the music where you are, and then you add on top of that. It’s about coming at it with your full self.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I miss doing a straight play.

College was the first time I felt I really had to choose who my friends were.

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.

Daveed Diggs is a very nervous person.

To be rapping in a musical on Broadway is just – that sentence doesn’t make any sense in my brain.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

History is about who tells it.

My mom is a white Jewish lady, and my dad is black. The cultures never seemed separate – I had a lot of mixed friends. When I was young, I identified with being Jewish, but I embraced my dad’s side, too.

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

I make the energy to go out. You can’t let the Broadway schedule run you.

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.

I have all of Kendrick Lamar on vinyl.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 went to Hebrew school but opted out of a bar mitzvah.

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

The reason you write something that is exciting and visceral is to force people to hear what you have to say, especially if you’re in any kind of marginalized community where people don’t want to listen. You have to come up with tricks to make them listen.

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

Using something that is really painful, generally, as the percussive element for a beat, I think is cool.

I majored in theater. I did plays. But musicals were not my thing.

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

There’s no reason for somebody who’s good at writing rap to be good at freestyling. They’re different parts of your brain. You can develop both skills. I’m a much better writer.

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.

As a kid, I was very shy.

I’m fascinated with the regionality of rap music.

I call myself a nerd all the time.

That’s the great thing about being a teenager. You think you’re a genius.

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

I didn’t aspire to be on Broadway.

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

I felt so loved and taken care of, and that’s a huge part of the reason I’m able to do what I do.

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.

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.