Lin-Manuel Miranda Quotes

I think every writer doubts themselves, every day. You procrastinate because you're afraid. You're always afraid it's not going to be as good as you want it to be. But, the key is overcoming fear.

As a writer, you live in permanent self-doubt; you're on permanent trial.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

If you're a writer, you're constantly doubting yourself.

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they've written or painted or composed before. I can't imagine approaching every single new project with-without doubt.

Every single time I start to do a picture, without fail, I feel as if I don't know what I'm doing.

I still don't know if I can write songs. I don't think anyone ever knows if they can write songs.

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

The whole excitement for writing anything is quite intense. And for a day or two, you think you've done everything extremely well. The problems start on the third day, and continues for the rest of your life.

I hate to look at the stuff I've written and consider what it means or why I do it.

Writing is about confidence and wondering what the point of anything is.

You always feel like a hack and a fraud when you're writing. It's just how it goes.

To write fiction is to think that you're doing it wrong - that your work habits are inhibiting you; that you've chosen the wrong subject; that you've chosen the right subject, but that someone else has, unbeknownst to you, already written exactly the book you're laboring over.

When people ask me where I get my ideas, I lie. I tell them I draw inspiration from the news, the world, my dreams. Or I joke and say that I steal from other writers. I lie because I don't know where ideas come from, and I'm afraid if I look too hard, they'll stop coming.

I am always in self-doubt... every moment of my filmmaking. I am supremely confident when the story is being written and everything is in our head. But the moment we get into the filmmaking, I start doubting myself - from the camera angle to the re-recording to getting the actors to do their shots.

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

As is the case with all original creators, Charles Chaplin's working life was an amalgam of arrogant self-confidence and deflating self-doubt.

I think writers are very anxious.

The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I've ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.

My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.

I can honestly say, there was a moment when I was writing 'Upstream Color' where I fell so hard for what it was becoming that I couldn't think of anything else. I was absolutely secure in this story in the way I'm rarely secure about anything else in my life.