I know a lot of people who wouldn't be comfortable with everything that comes with being in a band as big as Nirvana. The thing that I don't understand is not appreciating that simple gift of being able to play music.

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing.

There weren't a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn't have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

I'm kind of claustrophobic... It's not even like enclosed spaces. It's like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can't get out.

When digital technology started becoming the norm, you've got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won't last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

Some people record onto tape, and then they pay for the tape, and download those onto a hard drive. Initially in a Pro Tools program. Other people go straight into digital, and use no tape at all.

I'm so not macho. It's crazy. My man cave is so not a man cave.

Usually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I've never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it's not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That's how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be a musician.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument - learning to do your craft - that's the most important thing! It's not about what goes on in a computer!

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you've ever talked to that dude, he's the sweetest guy in the world - he's just a trip.

It's terrifying to play your favorite band's song in front of your favorite band.

If I ever felt like I was getting lost in the hurricane that was storming around Nirvana, I'd just go back to Virginia.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap - and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and 'Heart Shaped Box' and stuff on 'In Utero' just happened that way.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn't see any rock & roll bands. I had posters on my wall. I had Beatles records.

Who's to say what's a good voice and not a good voice?

I was at a New Year's Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, 'I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,' and I actually meant it.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

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

I have a recognizable silhouette.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I have all of Kendrick Lamar on vinyl.

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

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.

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.

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

Broadway was weird.

I've been sort of gentrification-obsessed. Right before I left Oakland in 2012, I was feeling it. Now I go back sporadically, and the change is drastic.

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.

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

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.

My favorite Prince album is 'Sign o' the Times.'

Daveed Diggs is a very nervous person.

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

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.

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.