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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
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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
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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 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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I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
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If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.
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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
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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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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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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 never write a play with an eye to film.
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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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There's no such thing as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.
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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 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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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 understand. You work very hard two days a week and you need a five-day weekend. That's normal.
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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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If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
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