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

More quotes by 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
I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.
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
Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week. The rest doesn't count.
Neil Simon
Image
All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
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
I feel like writing about a time when I was probably, and think all of us are, the happiest before the obligations start in.
Neil Simon
Image
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.
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
I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
Neil Simon
Image
I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.
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
I never write a play with an eye to film.
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
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
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
The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
Neil Simon
Image
I don't use computers... I'm someone who needs to see the page right away in my hand.
Neil Simon
Image
Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other.
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