Top 50 Neil Simon Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There’s no such thing as a sure thing. That’s why they call it gambling.”

— Neil Simon

2. “I understand. You work very hard two days a week and you need a five-day weekend. That’s normal.”

— Neil Simon

3. “Give your mind a chance to travel through foreign languages.”

— Neil Simon

4. “Talent is the gift plus the passion – a desire to succeed so intense that no force on earth can stop it.”

— Neil Simon

5. “Never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity.”

— Neil Simon

6. “Once you start compromising your thoughts, you’re a candidate for mediocrity.”

— Neil Simon

7. “When its 100 degrees in New York, it’s 72 in Los Angeles. When its 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it’s still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles.”

— Neil Simon

8. “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

9. “Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending.”

— Neil Simon

10. “Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me. I like being alone in a room. It’s almost a form of meditation- an investigation of my own life.”

— Neil Simon

11. “Once you’ve opened yourself up, it’s best to go all the way.”

— Neil Simon

12. “Money brings some happiness. But after a certain point, it just brings more money.”

— Neil Simon

13. “It looks different when you’re sober; I thought I had twice as much furniture.”

— Neil Simon

14. “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

15. “I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.”

— Neil Simon

16. “If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”

— Neil Simon

17. “He’s too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.”

— Neil Simon

18. “I got brown sandwiches and green sandwiches. Its either very new cheese or very old meat. – Oscar Madison, from The Odd Couple.”

— Neil Simon

19. “There are two million interesting people in New York and only seventy-eight in Los Angeles.”

— Neil Simon

20. “If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven’t been born yet.”

— Neil Simon

21. “Standing on a ledge again. Everyone laughs at dancing monkey with the typewriter. Not for long, though.”

— Neil Simon

22. “How long do you want to wait until you start enjoying life? When you’re sixty-five you get social security.”

— Neil Simon

23. “Goldie Hawn is funny, sexy, beautiful, talented, intelligent, warm, and consistently sunny. Other than that, she doesn’t impress me at all.”

— Neil Simon

24. “Don’t listen to those who say, you taking too big a chance. Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today.”

— Neil Simon

25. “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

26. “All humor is based on hostility – that’s why World War Two was funny.”

— Neil Simon

27. “New York is not Mecca. It just smells like it.”

— Neil Simon

28. “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

29. “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

30. “You’re a witness. You’re always standing around watching what’s happening, scribbling in your book what other people do. You have to get in the middle of it. You have to take sides. Make a contribution to the fight. Any fight. The one you believe in. Until you do, you’ll never be a writer, Eugene.”

— Neil Simon

31. “Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.”

— Neil Simon

32. “Don’t listen to those who say, you are taking too big a chance. Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today. Most important, don’t listen when the little voice of fear inside you rears its ugly head...”

— Neil Simon

33. “Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you’ll have a happy and wonderful marriage. Like two out of every ten couples.”

— Neil Simon

34. “People with honorary awards are looked upon with disfavor. Would you let an honorary mechanic fix your brand-new Mercedes?”

— Neil Simon

35. “A writer without confidence is like a metaphor without something to compare itself to.”

— Neil Simon

36. “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

37. “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

38. “Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we’ll get some fluid and embalm each other.”

— Neil Simon

39. “Never have so many given so much for so long for so little for so few for so seldom.”

— Neil Simon

40. “Baptists are only funny underwater.”

— Neil Simon

41. “Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week. The rest doesn’t count.”

— Neil Simon

42. “It was a limited engagement. When they stop coming, I limit the engagement.”

— Neil Simon

43. “I never write a play with an eye to film.”

— Neil Simon

44. “Nothin’ sweeter than danger, boys, am I right?”

— Neil Simon

45. “I don’t like to see Shakespeare in a theater. I like to see Shakespeare in the park.”

— Neil Simon

46. “Evan Handler’s new book is simply wonderful. He pulls you inside his life, and you come out his very close friend.”

— Neil Simon

47. “I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.”

— Neil Simon

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

— Neil Simon

49. “You must realize that honorary degrees are given generally to people whose SAT scores were too low to get them into schools the regular way. As a matter of fact, it was my SAT scores that led me into my present vocation in life, comedy.”

— Neil Simon

50. “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.”

— Neil Simon