Neil Simon Quotes

Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.

I think paranoia can be instructive in the right doses. Paranoia is a skill.

I prefer to be alive, so I'm cautious about taking risks.

Fear has been my biggest friend. Fear of the unknown. Whenever I've been afraid, I've been very self-protective.

Fear is not a friend of mine. But it's something to have a healthy awareness of.

I'm not a reckless person, in the sense that I wouldn't do something that's reckless or dangerous, because I'm a pretty careful person. For example, I don't snow ski. I did it once, and I promised God I'd never do it again if I lived through it.

So in some ways my life, my background has been isolating and I think I'm a bit more scared as a person. I don't walk alone or in the dark. If I go out the driver will wait for me to go into the house.

I'm always on the verge of death in my head.

I am often disgusted at hearing young people I know, declare that they are afraid of doing this or that, because they MIGHT be killed.

True it is that each of us has only one life - but how many of us 'die a thousand deaths' in fear and nervousness!

I'm not a big risk-taker - being bad just wasn't worth my time or the risk of having the consequences for it. So maybe I'm a little bit lame for that.

I'd definitely say I'm a depressive, someone who suffers from depression.

Fear will make you stingy.

When I was a kid, I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year. I refused to step out of the door because I thought something would happen. I had all these compulsive thoughts or whatever, and my head was really messed up.

I play low to the ice and that's a way I've protected myself in the past - I just felt that it was better to be safe than sorry.

True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

I was born with a nervous breakdown.

The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark--why not kill myself? Missed the bus--better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie--maybe I shouldn't kill myself.

The step between prudence and paranoia is short and steep. Prudence wears a seat belt. Paranoia avoids cars. Prudence washes with soap. Paranoia avoids human contact. Prudence saves for old age. Paranoia hoards even trash. Prudence prepares and plans, paranoia panics. Prudence calculates the risk and takes the plunge. Paranoia never enters the water.

Now everything was changed. She walked about with cautious, anxious steps, staring constantly at the ground, on the lookout for things that crept and crawled. Bushes were dangerous, and so were sea grass and rain water. There were little animals everywhere. They could turn up between the covers of a book, flattened and dead, for the fact is that creeping animals, tattered animals, and dead animals are with us all our lives, from beginning to end. Grandmother tried to discuss this with her, to no avail. Irrational terror is so hard to deal with.

For years my life alternated between depression and acute anxiety. One night I woke up in a state of dread and intense fear, more intense than I had ever experienced before. Life seemed meaningless, barren, hostile. It became so unbearable that suddenly the thought came into my mind, I cannot live with myself any longer.

Perhaps a man may commit suicide in self-defense.

What people don't understand when you've already been a suicide and pulled through is that after the sadness comes fear: Where is my mind going with this? I don't want to die. I do not want to die. When you don't have so much control over your own thoughts, over the myriad voices in your head, you don't know where they could go.

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings