Lin-Manuel Miranda Quotes

Whatever it is that I thirst for in my current project tends to turn up in my following project.

Thirteen years I took on this last book.

It's like whether you're in a huge movie or you've just recorded an incredible album you've got to do the next thing, and that's part of being an artist.

Being a writer is a very private, internal process. Ultimately I am more the writer, being an introvert.

I am both so beaten up and bolstered up - I've gotten so many criticisms and accolades - that the fulfillment happens on the floor in front of the camera, not when the project comes out.

I think that you just understand, as any creative person, that there's a beast that you have to beat, and it never goes away. I've resigned myself to that, and it's kind of what keeps you going. Writing is the worst and the best.

Some people get turned on by my work, and it sells, but what drives me is the process of making it.

I've only had four ideas for a novel in my life, and I've written all of them.

I don't know exactly where the ideas come from. One day, a sentence just popped into my head - 'There was going to be trouble, and, hell, he just wasn't in the mood for it' - and I knew I had a novel.

I come up with a blurb at the beginning, but the book will always be completely different by the time it's finished. They say, 'Where's the book you were going to write?' And I say, 'Forget about it. It doesn't exist.'

There's always hunger to create because I believe that's what I do. I believe that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

Writing is not what you start. It's not even what you finish. It's what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see.

The truth of the matter is coming up with a title is one of the most challenging things we do.

I had no idea what to expect when I first started writing.

Most ideas remain inside you for a while. You tell somebody when there is a spark or a thought, and leave it at that. You come back later, write down a few lines. I makes note in my mind on whether it can be made into a film or not.

I work very closely with my co-writer, Efthimis Filippou. Ideas either start from him or me, and then the other one develops it, and it's a constant conversation.

Every day I write. I am not waiting for a great idea from heaven.

I like making things. I enjoy putting words and images on a blank space. There should be joy in the writing itself because parts of it are so challenging and lonesome. I take great pleasure in reading, researching, and interviewing. I enjoy forming my sentences and revising them to make them clean.

I think any person who is starting out in a creative endeavor is not going to be good at it right out of the gate.

I go to my office nearly every day, and I'll sit there for six or seven hours and come up with ideas, and that's the only way I can justify turning up on stage.

I just feel the need as a writer to try something kind of deep and fulfilling.

I'm always thinking about stories and ideas, and I have a few I'd like to actively pursue, but as much as I love them, I love the process of creation, and I want to go on and create things for myself, and create new things.

When I was young, I would write all the time. Novels, plays, and poems. It's like a disease - my life is filled with fantasies, and I have to write them all down.

Looking back at it now, it's almost overwhelming, the amount of work that went into writing 'Shine', and to come up with the ideas that we're doing now.

I write wherever I am. It helps that the writing process, for me, is a lone-wolf mission.