Quote

[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

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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
Without
Walk
Play
Walks
Clearing
Right
Path
Geography
Writing
Getting
Knife
Write
Compass
Sense
Knives
Place
Forest
Find
Forests

More quotes by Neil Simon

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Once you've opened yourself up, it's best to go all the way.
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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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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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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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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 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 much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
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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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If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.
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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 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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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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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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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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If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
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I never write a play with an eye to film.
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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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Standing on a ledge again. Everyone laughs at dancing monkey with the typewriter. Not for long, though.
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