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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.

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
Play
Obviously
Experiences
Adults
Childhood
Formed
Characters
Mature
Personality
Adult
Use
Affected
Character
Plays

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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
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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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Evan Handler's new book is simply wonderful. He pulls you inside his life, and you come out his very close friend.
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I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.
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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week. The rest doesn't count.
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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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If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.
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Once you've opened yourself up, it's best to go all the way.
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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.
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Rewriting is when writing really gets to be fun. . . . In baseball you only get three swings and you're out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you'll hit the ball.
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There's no such thing as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.
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I don't like dating or just living with a woman. I like to create a relationship, a marriage. And almost all of my marriages have involved children, so I'm really a family man as well.
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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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You get attached to the way you write, and I'm attached to notebooks. That's where I really write the plays. Just two or three pages at a time, then I transfer to the typewriter and rewrite while I type.
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I don't use computers... I'm someone who needs to see the page right away in my hand.
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All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
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I understand. You work very hard two days a week and you need a five-day weekend. That's normal.
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If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
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