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The first book was my first attempt at writing full-length prose.

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
Full
Firsts
Book
First
Writing
Prose
Length
Attempt

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It looks different when you're sober I thought I had twice as much furniture.
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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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Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.
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I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.
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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 understand. You work very hard two days a week and you need a five-day weekend. That's normal.
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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 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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[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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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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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.
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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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I don't use computers... I'm someone who needs to see the page right away in my hand.
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I never write a play with an eye to film.
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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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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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Once you've opened yourself up, it's best to go all the way.
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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'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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