Lin-Manuel Miranda Quotes

Lin-Manuel Miranda is an American composer, lyricist, singer, rapper, actor, producer, and playwright, widely known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals In the Heights and Hamilton. His awards include a Pulitzer Prize, three Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2018. ...more

Birth: January 16, 1980

The biggest secret weapon we had in regards to really being true to this part of the world, and making sure this part of the world could see themselves in this film [Moana] in a way that felt positive and accurate, was Opetaia, my co-writer, Opetaia Foa’i, who has a great band called Te Vaka and is an amazing musical and cultural ambassador.

I got to holler just to be heard.

Topic(s): Heard

I will lay down my life if it sets us free.

Topic(s): Ifs , Lays

I got the job [in Moana], and the next day I was on a plane to New Zealand, where the rest of the team was already doing research, and meeting with different choirs, and sort of really soaking up the music, the musical world of, the musical heritage of this part of the world.

Topic(s): World , Different , Jobs

You can’t control the success or failure of a thing you work on. You can only control the thing you work on.

Topic(s): Success Or Failure

The distance between where I am and where I want to be seems impossibly large.

Topic(s): Want , Seems , Distance

I grew up in the time just when cassettes were waning and CDs were growing. And so mix tapes – and not mix CDs – mix tapes were an important part of the friendship and mating rituals of New York adolescents. If you were a girl and I wanted you – to show you I like you, I would make you a 90-minute cassette wherein I would show off my tastes. I would play you a musical theater song next to a hip-hop song next to an oldie next to some pop song you maybe never heard, also subliminally telling you how much I like you with all these songs.

Topic(s): Important , Song , Girl

It’s got to feel, the pulse has to feel like this part of the world, the instrumentation has to be true to that, and so, between him, [composer] Mark Mancina and myself, we really chased that, while serving our story Moana].

Topic(s): World , Feels , Stories

I think I started writing because no one had ever told me you can write about the things you know in a musical. They don’t have to come from some far off place.