Quote

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.

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
Greater
Stands
Like
Sound
Romantic
Force
Page
Write
Pages
Hands
Telling
May
Writers
Middleman
Feel
Standing
Middlemen
Feels
Hand
Pens

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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 understand. You work very hard two days a week and you need a five-day weekend. That's normal.
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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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If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
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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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[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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Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week. The rest doesn't count.
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If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.
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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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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other.
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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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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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I never write a play with an eye to film.
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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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There's no such thing as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.
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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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