Hansen Song Quotes

Jesus emerges not as the cultural captive of any one group of people, but as the promise of salvation to all believers and as the foundation of liberation in this life.

Dear Evan Hansen, and he comes closer to me as he sings the words “So what if it’s us, what if it’s us, and only us.” This song is so beautiful.

I am not a New Yorker. There are so many unspoken rules when you live here, like the way you're never supposed to stop in the middle of the sidewalk or stare dreamily up at the tall buildings or pause to read graffiti. No giant folding maps, no fanny packs, no eye contact. No humming songs from Dear Evan Hansen in public. And you're definitely not supposed to take selfies at street corners, even if there's a hot dog stand and a whole line of yellow taxis in the background, which is eerily how you always pictured New York. You're allowed to silently appreciate it, but you have to be cool. From what I can tell, that's the whole point of New York: being cool.

There’s an old song about how breaking up is “hard to do,” but you know what’s harder than breaking up? Not breaking up.

The 2017-18 Broadway season offered a perfect example of the difference between the performative and psychological styles of acting in musicals. At the Shubert Theatre, veteran singer and comedienne Bette Midler returned to Broadway in a revival of Hello, Dolly!, a musical that demands above all star presence. To the delight of her fans, Midler played Bette Midler as Dolly. No one in the audience wanted her to be anyone else and the part didn’t demand the plumbing of psychological depth. A block away, young Ben Platt offered a powerful example of how a talented acting singer can create a believable character through speech and song in a musical. Platt’s performance in Dear Evan Hansen (Book, Steven Levenson; Music and lyrics, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), has made him a star but Platt never breaks character, never acknowledges the audience. Ben Platt convincingly becomes Evan Hansen in both dialogue and song. Dear Evan Hansen is a post-Sondheim musical that demands intense acting as well as singing; Hello, Dolly! demands personality.

Being a kid in 1978 was pretty amazing. Not only were arcades on the rise, but Garfield, that lovable lasagna-eating orange cat, was in just about every newspaper across the country, Superman was in theaters for the first time, the Bee Gees were topping the music charts with songs from Saturday Night Fever, and The Incredible Hulk was the number one TV show in America. Like I said, it was a good time to be a kid.

Dividing the world between good and bad people misses the heart of what makes Christianity so revolutionary. Preferences about displays of emotion, song selection, and length of service can vary from culture to culture while still conveying the same Christian faith. But Christians often treat their preferences as absolute requirements for faithful practice.10 Revival, however, breaks down the world’s barriers, as Christians trust only in Jesus and not in their cultural preferences.

Buddhists disagreed about the exact date when the world would end. No one in Song dynasty China expected the apocalypse to arrive in 1052 (they thought it would come five centuries earlier), but the Japanese dreaded 1052 as much as the Liao Buddhists.

Towns have their palaces and palaces their rich men, who have problems with their horses and their slave girls. But in the Arabian desert there were no palaces, no rich men, and no real problems. In the Arabian desert people rise before the sun; it is important to use those hours when it is light but not yet too hot. In the dawn, long before the sun makes its appearance and sets the day on fire, the Arab has already lit his own camp-fire, squatted down before it, picked out a glowing piece of wood and put it into the top of his pipe while waiting for the water to boil for his coffee. When coffee is ready, he pours it into small cups and hands it round to the others. He offers only a single mouthful at a time; when they have drunk that, they must hand the cup back and get another mouthful. This is the natural law of hospitality. To hand someone a cup brimful would be tactless; it would be like saying: There you are, drink it and go! Instead, things proceed unhurriedly, and one sits a while with the empty cup in one’s hand before handing it across to get another mouthful. Meanwhile, the ball of the sun comes up, clings a little to the low horizon, and then sets off with a jerk. Nothing else happens. No bird-song introduces the start of the day, no trees rustle in the wind. The human voice is the first and only one to break the great silence. Everything seems to have withdrawn to make it easier to scrutinise one’s own life more clearly. Indeed, there is scarcely anything else. It is inscribed upon the surrounding space; it is one’s own voice in the silence, one’s own footprint in the warm sand. It is not much—as one realises—and what there is will soon be erased. One is almost nothing. But the Arabs in the desert are content with small things; they live their lives as they drink their coffee, and are content with a little each time. They are guests of fate, and they accept it as reasonable that fate should not pour an abundance of wealth into the vessels they hold out. It would not be in accord with the laws of hospitality. It would be as though it bade them scornfully go their way. In the desert no other definition of life is to be found but poverty.