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

More quotes by Neil Simon

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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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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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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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Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week. The rest doesn't count.
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I never write a play with an eye to film.
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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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Once you've opened yourself up, it's best to go all the way.
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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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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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Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.
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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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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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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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There's no such thing as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.
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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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Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other.
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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 much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
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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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If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.
Neil Simon