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

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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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All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
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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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I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
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I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.
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If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.
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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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Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other.
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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 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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Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.
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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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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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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.
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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 don't use computers... I'm someone who needs to see the page right away in my hand.
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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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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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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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