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It's always painful when you're writing memoirs because you've got to go through the dark places, but it gives you a chance to find out the person you really are, not the person you thought you were.

Neil Simon

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Neil Simon
Age: 91 †
Born: 1927
Born: July 4
Died: 2018
Died: August 26
Entrepreneur
Film Producer
Librettist
Lyricist
Playwright
Screenwriter
New York City
New York
Marvin Neil Simon
Find
Painful
Giving
Places
Writing
Gives
Really
Dark
Always
Chance
Thought
Persons
Memoirs
Person
Memoir

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He's too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.
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I feel like writing about a time when I was probably, and think all of us are, the happiest before the obligations start in.
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I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage.
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Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other.
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If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.
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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
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All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
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I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.
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Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.
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Talent is the gift plus the passion - a desire to succeed so intense that no force on earth can stop it.
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I go to see plays all the time, and whenever I see Chekhov, I'm amazed at how this Russian play strikes home to me living 100 years later in New York City. I'm drawn to him because of his way with characters and their relationships with each other.
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There's no such thing as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.
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Writers feel like a middleman, standing with pen in hand over the page. A force greater than me stands above telling me what to write. That may sound romantic, but that's how it feels.
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Once you've opened yourself up, it's best to go all the way.
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I never write a play with an eye to film.
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I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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A lot of your personality is formed before you're 12, obviously, but only a few of my plays use characters from my childhood. The more mature plays are affected only by my adult experiences.
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Standing on a ledge again. Everyone laughs at dancing monkey with the typewriter. Not for long, though.
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[When you write a play] you walk into a forest without a knife, without a compass. But . . . if you have a sense of geography, you find that you're clearing a path and getting to the right place.
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