Top 35 Lin-Manuel Miranda Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Everyday has the potential to be the greatest day of your life.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

2. “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

3. “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

4. “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

5. “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

6. “Legacy. What is a Legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

7. “History is entirely created by the person who tells the story.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

8. “You are perfectly cast in your life. I can’t imagine anyone but you in the role. Go play.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

9. “Talk less. Smile more.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

10. “Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

11. “Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment – and that is the font of creativity.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

12. “Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

13. “To engender empathy and create a world using only words is the closest thing we have to magic.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

14. “I know how deep in the DNA musicals get because they’re deep in my DNA.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

15. “I’m not throwing away my shot.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

16. “You have no control. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

17. “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

18. “I was having a drink with Hugh Laurie, with whom I’d worked on his series House, and I told him I wanted to write a breakup letter from King George to the colonies. Without blinking, he improv’d at me, “Awwww, you’ll be back,” wagging his finger. I laughed and filed it away. Thanks, Hugh Laurie.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

19. “You didn’t expect these notes to turn into my therapy session, did you?”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

20. “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

21. “BURR: Alexander joins forces with James Madison and John Jay to write a series of essays defending the new United States Constitution, entitled The Federalist Papers. The plan was to write a total of 25 essays, the work divided evenly among the three men. In the end, they wrote 85 essays, in the span of six months. John Jay got sick after writing 5. James Madison wrote 29. Hamilton wrote the other 51.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

22. “How on Earth did you do that with the same 24 hours a day that everyone else gets?”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

23. “Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

24. “Comma sexting. It’s a thing. Get into it.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

25. “If art can help us grieve, can help us mourn, then lean on it.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

26. “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

27. “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

28. “I’m erasing myself from the narrative. Let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted when you broke her heart.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

29. “When you smile, you knock me out, I fall apart – and I thought I was so smart.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

30. “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.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

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

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

32. “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

33. “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

34. “Lin beamed, and threw a couple of triumphant middle fingers in the air.”

— Lin-Manuel Miranda

35. “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