Lin-Manuel Miranda

Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment - and that is the font of creativity

The past places no absolute limit on the future.

I know my sister like I know my own mind, you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind.

[WASHINGTON]It__ alright, you want to fight, you__e got a hungerI was just like you when I was youngerHead full of fantasies of dyin_ like a martyr?[HAMILTON]Yes[WASHINGTON]Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder

[BURR]I am the one thing in life I can control.

We've had characters like Trump in American politics forever, characters who trade on xenophobia.

I don't differentiate between black and Latino actors. We're in the same struggle to be represented in a way that's even close to honest. And I can tell you that the amount of Latino characters I can point at and say, 'That's what my life experience looks like' - I can't think of any off the top of my head besides Jimmy Smits in 'Mi Familia.'

History is so subjective. The teller of it determines it.

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.

Making words rhyme for a living is one of the great joys of my life... That's a superpower I've been very conscious of developing. I started at the same level as everybody else, and then I just listened to more music and talked to myself until it was an actual superpower I could pull out on special occasions.

I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. We just knew the rule was you're going to have to work twice as hard.

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.

'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.

Why do you write like you're running out of time?

[ELIZA]You and your words flooded my senses, your sentences left me defenseless. You built me palaces out of paragraphs, you built cathedrals.

Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside.

My wife's the reason anything gets done, she nudges me towards promise by degrees. She is a perfect symphony of one our son is her most beautiful reprise. We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they're finished songs and start to play. When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised--not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live in times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall and light from dying embers--remembrances that hope and love last longer. And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. I sing Vanessa's symphony. Eliza tells her story. Now, fill the world with music, love, and pride.

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the I__ a Fraud phase. You go through the I__l 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__ received as such?