Top 96 Manuel Miranda Quotes
#1. Pretty much anything William Shatner is in is great. He's great at playing that 'I'm the only one sane in the world' character.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#2. Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment - and that is the font of creativity
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#3. We love 'Fiddler.' We love 'West Side Story.' I want to be in that club. I want to be in the club that writes the musical that every high school does.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#5. {ELIZA]
I have never been the type to try and grab the spotlight. We were at a revel with some rebels on a hot night. Laughing at my sister as she dazzling the room. Then you walked in and my heart went boom.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#7. If Hamilton were on Twitter, he would have been a worse oversharer than me.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#9. When I was asked to do a song from 'In the Heights' at the White House in 2009, I chose instead to do 'Alexander Hamilton' because I felt like I was meeting a moment.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#10. In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#12. Death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints, it takes and it takes and it takes, and we keep living anyway....
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#13. The Lord, in his kindness
He gives me what you always wanted
He gives me more-
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#14. I can't say I have enough experience with Hollywood to feel that I've encountered racism there. I can tell you that I did about five fruitless years of auditioning for voiceovers where I did variations on tacos and Latin accents, and my first screen role was as a bellhop on 'The Sopranos.'
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#16. The musicals that leave us kind of staggering on our feet are the ones that really reach for a lot.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#17. Lin beamed, and threw a couple of triumphant middle fingers in the air.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#20. I may not live to see our glory
But I will gladly join the fight
And when our children tell our story
They'll tell the story of tonight
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#21. I'm honored to have been chosen as a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. I am hugely appreciative for the support I have had throughout my life, and I look forward to using the grant to help institutions that have fed my soul and to support new work that inspires me.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#22. The reason 'Hamilton' works is because there is no distance between that story that happened 200-some-odd years ago and now, because it looks like America now. It helps create a connection that wouldn't have been there if it was 20 white guys on stage.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#23. Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#24. Sometimes the right person tells the right story at the right moment, and through a combination of luck and design, a creative expression gains new force.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#25. We've had characters like Trump in American politics forever, characters who trade on xenophobia.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#26. [BURR]
We dream of a brand new start, but we dream in the dark for the most part. Dark as a tomb where it happens. I've got to be in the room where it happens.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#27. One of my first favorite books was 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would just go up to people and say, 'I can sing 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would make them sit through me reciting it, and I'd go all the way, each time. I've always hooked into lyrics.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#28. I walk alone to the store
And it's quiet uptown
I never liked the quiet before
I take the children to church on Sunday
A sign of the cross at the door
And I pray
That never used to happen before
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#29. A lot of the reason the Universal version of 'Heights' went away is that they were afraid they didn't have a big enough Latino star to bankroll this movie. The people I dealt with at the studio who wanted to make this movie were very passionate about it.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#30. My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#31. Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#32. Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the 'I'm a Fraud' phase. You go through the 'I'll Never Finish' phase. And every once in a while you think, 'What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it's received as such?'
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#33. Everything we know about Hamilton, we knew when he was alive, because he told us.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#34. What 'Twilight Zone' did was show we all have a great capacity for good and evil.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#35. [ELIZA]
You and your words flooded my senses, your sentences left me defenseless. You built me palaces out of paragraphs, you built cathedrals.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#36. I know my sister like I know my own mind, you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#37. Biggie and Big Pun were the best storytellers of the '90s. I would get wrapped up in the narrative of what they were talking about.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#38. Because of the success of 'Hamilton' and 'On Your Feet!' you can't hide behind the old argument of, 'It needs to be bankable, so we can't put all these people of color in the show.' We are bankable.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#40. There's been lots of theater that uses hip-hop in it, but more often than not, it's used as a joke - isn't it hilarious that these characters are rapping. I treat it as a musical form, and a musical form that allows you to pack in a ton of lyric.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#41. I am the one thing in life I can control. I am inimitable; I am an original. I'm not falling behind or running late. I'm not standing still: I am lying in wait.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#42. [NINA]
When I was a child I stayed wide awake
Climbed to the highest place
On every fire escape
Restless to climb
I got every scholarship
Saved every dollar
The first to go to college
How do I tell them why
I'm coming back home?
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#44. Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#47. What's incredible about 'Hamilton,' and the reason you can't get a ticket, is because everyone's responding to it. Everyone is seeing a bit of themselves in it.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#48. I always had an eye toward the stage for the story of Hamilton's life, but I began with the idea of a concept album, the way Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' were albums before they were musicals.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#49. The only other thing that's like video games for me is watching tennis on TV. I can have it on, and there's a rhythmic quality to it - I can be watching Wimbledon or the U.S. Open and still be working.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#50. You know what's a great way of tricking people into thinking you're a genius? Write a show about geniuses!
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#51. How on Earth did you do that with the same 24 hours a day that everyone else gets?
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#52. I think Lafayette wants to rap in French now. I have to go learn some French.
Damn it, Lafayette
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#54. You are perfectly cast in your life. I can't imagine anyone but you in the role. Go play.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#55. 'West Wing' was huge. Like 'Hamilton,' it pulls back the curtain on how decision-making happens at the highest level, or at least how you hope it would be. The amount of information Aaron Sorkin packs into a scene gave me this courage to trust the audience to keep up.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#56. I like the quiet it takes to pursue an idea the way I pursued 'Hamilton,' but I couldn't write a book, because there's no applause at the end of writing a book.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#57. What I learned from my go-round with 'In the Heights' is that it's tough to make a movie. In Hollywood, even the people in charge have people in charge.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#61. To engender empathy and create a world using only words is the closest thing we have to magic.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#62. (On 'The Story Of Tonight (Reprise)')
Tommy Kail and I always described this scene as "When your hometown friends are at the party with your college friends.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#63. Pa
I did exactly as you said, Pa
I held my head up high..
Even before we got to ten
I was aiming for the sky
I was aiming for the sky
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#65. Life doesn't discriminate
Between the sinners and the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall and we break
And we make our mistakes
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#66. I couldn't possibly write 'Next to Normal,' but God, I can weep and watch 'Next to Normal' five times.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#67. I stop wasting time on tears.
I live another fifty years.
It's not enough!
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#68. 'Rent' was the show that made me want to write. Or that showed me you're allowed to write.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#69. I am not throwing away my shot.
I am not throwing away my shot.
I'm just like my country.
I'm young, scrappy, and hungry.
And I am not throwing away my shot.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#70. The fun for me in collaboration is, one, working with other people just makes you smarter; that's proven.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#71. On opening night, standing under the Rogers's marquee, [Lin] realized that if Eliza's struggle was the element of Hamilton's story that had inspired him the most, then the show itself was a part of her legacy.
Jeremy McCarter
#73. I know how deep in the DNA musicals get because they're deep in my DNA.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#75. I'll make the world safe and sound for you..
You will come of age with our young nation.
We'll bleed and fight for you, we'll make it right for you.
If we lay a strong enough foundation.. We'll pass it on to you, we'll give the world to you.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#76. [HAMILTON}
There's a million things I haven't done but just you wait.
Just you wait.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#78. In 'Hamilton,' we're telling the stories of old, dead white men, but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#79. Raise a glass to freedom
Something they can never take away
No matter what they tell you
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#80. Come on brain, think of things
Come on brain, think of things
Come on brain, be so smart
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#81. Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#82. If there is a Busta Rhymes of musical theater, it probably is Mandy Patinkin.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#83. It looked like Mission Control, if NASA's business was launching rockets full of rapping multiracial actors in colonial garb into space.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#84. (Questlove) Is this the most revolutionary thing to happen to Broadway, or the most revolutionary thing to happen to hip-hop?
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#85. You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#86. When you smile, you knock me out, I fall apart - and I thought I was so smart.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#87. His hair has gone grey. He passes every day. They say he walks the length of the city.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#88. The only shows I saw as a kid were that holy trinity: 'Les Miz,' 'Cats,' 'Phantom.'
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#89. You didn't expect these notes to turn into my therapy session, did you?
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#90. I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. We just knew the rule was you're going to have to work twice as hard.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#91. [WASHINGTON]
It's alright, you want to fight, you've got a hunger
I was just like you when I was younger
Head full of fantasies of dyin' like a martyr?
[HAMILTON]
Yes
[WASHINGTON]
Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#92. I wish writing were really like the way Andy staged it here: Me in a mania at a desk while a group of people stand around cheering in awe. More realistically, it's me pooping around on Twitter until I get an idea.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#93. I think I'm always subconsciously trying to write the ideal school play. Lots of parts for everybody, great parts for women - don't forget, more girls try out than boys in the school play; everyone gets to be in the school play.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#94. When I get called in for stuff for Hollywood, I get to be the best friend of the Caucasian leadIf I want to play the main guy, I have found, I have to write it.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#95. When Lin optioned his book, Ron was relieved that the Founding Father who had the most dramatic and least appreciated life story would finally get his due - even though a rap musical was the last way that Ron had anticipated Hamilton getting it.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#96. (On Angelica in 'Satisfied')
Oof. Tryin' to out-Eponine Eponine up in this piece.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
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