Neil Simon
Neil Simon
Marvin Neil Simonis an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He has written more than thirty plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He has received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth4 July 1927
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Neil Simon quotes about
funny war humor
All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
baseball fun writing
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.
humorous nervous belts
He's too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.
typewriters dancing laughing
Standing on a ledge again. Everyone laughs at dancing monkey with the typewriter. Not for long, though.
writing knives play
[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.
underwater baptists
Baptists are only funny underwater.
eye writing play
I never write a play with an eye to film.
character play childhood
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.
notebook writing typewriters
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.
children men dating
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.
hands pages needs
I don't use computers... I'm someone who needs to see the page right away in my hand.
writing hands may
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.
character writing years
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.
writing play mind
I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.