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I never write a play with an eye to film.

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
Writing
Never
Eye
Write
Film

More quotes by Neil Simon

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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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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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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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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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All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
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If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
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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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He's too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.
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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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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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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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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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[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.
Neil Simon
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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
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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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Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other.
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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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Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.
Neil Simon