LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

If there is a Busta Rhymes of musical theater, it probably is Mandy Patinkin.

Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.

What I learned from my go-round with 'In the Heights' is that it's tough to make a movie. In Hollywood, even the people in charge have people in charge.

I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around on my keyboard and my computer until I have a beat or a chord progression, I'll record it as a loop, export it to iTunes, then walk around with the loop and sort of talk to myself in the loop, and that's how I get the lyrics.

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.

The only other thing that's like video games for me is watching tennis on TV. I can have it on, and there's a rhythmic quality to it - I can be watching Wimbledon or the U.S. Open and still be working.

Biggie and Big Pun were the best storytellers of the '90s. I would get wrapped up in the narrative of what they were talking about.

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.

When I was asked to do a song from 'In the Heights' at the White House in 2009, I chose instead to do 'Alexander Hamilton' because I felt like I was meeting a moment.

Pretty much anything William Shatner is in is great. He's great at playing that 'I'm the only one sane in the world' character.

If Hamilton were on Twitter, he would have been a worse oversharer than me.

I think I'm always subconsciously trying to write the ideal school play. Lots of parts for everybody, great parts for women - don't forget, more girls try out than boys in the school play; everyone gets to be in the school play.

I only know how to write musicals.

The musicals that leave us kind of staggering on our feet are the ones that really reach for a lot.

I kind of need to be ambulatory to write lyrics.

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.

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.

The only shows I saw as a kid were that holy trinity: 'Les Miz,' 'Cats,' 'Phantom.'

'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.

I always had an eye toward the stage for the story of Hamilton's life, but I began with the idea of a concept album, the way Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' were albums before they were musicals.

I couldn't possibly write 'Next to Normal,' but God, I can weep and watch 'Next to Normal' five times.

We love 'Fiddler.' We love 'West Side Story.' I want to be in that club. I want to be in the club that writes the musical that every high school does.

Everything we know about Hamilton, we knew when he was alive, because he told us.

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?'

I'm honored to have been chosen as a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. I am hugely appreciative for the support I have had throughout my life, and I look forward to using the grant to help institutions that have fed my soul and to support new work that inspires me.