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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.

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
Writing
Last
Original
Years
Actors
Six
Life
Write
Actor
Character
Months
Might
Leave
Restrict
Firsts
Particular
Production
Play
Stage
Productions
First
Lasts
Originals

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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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I understand. You work very hard two days a week and you need a five-day weekend. That's normal.
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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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Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.
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I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.
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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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Standing on a ledge again. Everyone laughs at dancing monkey with the typewriter. Not for long, though.
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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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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
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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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All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
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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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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 use computers... I'm someone who needs to see the page right away in my hand.
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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 never write a play with an eye to film.
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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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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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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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