Quote

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.

Neil Simon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Later
Gets
Rewriting
Fun
Swings
Almost
Sooner
Three
Ball
Many
Balls
Writing
Really
Baseball

More quotes by Neil Simon

Image
I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
Neil Simon
Image
All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
Neil Simon
Image
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
Image
There's no such thing as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.
Neil Simon
Image
I never write a play with an eye to film.
Neil Simon
Image
It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
Neil Simon
Image
Standing on a ledge again. Everyone laughs at dancing monkey with the typewriter. Not for long, though.
Neil Simon
Image
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
Image
He's too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.
Neil Simon
Image
[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
Image
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.
Neil Simon
Image
Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.
Neil Simon
Image
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.
Neil Simon
Image
Once you've opened yourself up, it's best to go all the way.
Neil Simon
Image
Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other.
Neil Simon
Image
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.
Neil Simon
Image
I understand. You work very hard two days a week and you need a five-day weekend. That's normal.
Neil Simon
Image
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.
Neil Simon
Image
Evan Handler's new book is simply wonderful. He pulls you inside his life, and you come out his very close friend.
Neil Simon
Image
Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week. The rest doesn't count.
Neil Simon