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Simon on first meeting seems more like an accountant than a comic wit. Although he can be a deft public performer, the private man is a thoughtful, earnest conversationalist, never a raconteur using companions as an audience. He realizes he is considered aloof even by those who know him best, and admits, "I'm always having to tell myself, 'Get back into the conversation.'" When he does get off a good line, it is a throwaway, almost sotto voce, and rarely with a stranger. Director Mike Nichols, who staged four of Simon's plays, recalls attending one in which he had not been involved. Simon greeted him wearing a handsome coat. Says Nichols: "It was an off night. The play had problems, real problems. After the performance, Neil took my arm, walked me down the alley, and said, 'Mike, so you really like my coat?'" Lavin recalls Simon's coming to rehearsal with a bad cold and remarking that even the clothes in his closet were sneezing. When one of Simon's daughters told Silverman, who plays Eugene Jerome, that he resembled pictures of Simon at the same age, the playwright turned and said, "The only piece of advice I have for you is 'Hold onto your hair.' "
Writing is the one constant in Simon's life. Says Trilogy Director Gene Saks, one of Simon's valued friends: "He never stops writing because of any personal problem; it is his great release, and he never has writer's block." Daughter Ellen says her "earliest recollection was of sneaking past the door when he was writing. I always felt that I didn't have his full attention. He seemed to be distant, in his own world." For Simon, the early stages of writing a play are a kind of Freudian trek through the subconscious: "There's no blueprint per se. You just go through the tunnels of your mind, and you come out someplace." It takes him about four months to create a play from nothing but considerably longer to refine it. Sometimes he is simply trying to make the play funnier—or intentionally less funny. He prides himself on the ability to pace his jokes to the needs of the plot and theme.
Perhaps the most dramatic instance of rewriting in Simon's entire career is the scene of mother and son dancing in Broadway Bound. There was no hint of it in the original version. Instead there was a scene between Eugene and his girlfriend Josie, a character intended to represent Simon's first wife. Early in rehearsals it became apparent the scene was not working. "I realized it was in the wrong play," says Simon. "Some other time I will write about Joan. She needs a whole play to herself. Right then I had the idea of a scene between Eugene and his mother. I liked the idea of him reaching into his family's past to find out where he came from." The crucial scene of the best play of Simon's career took three days to write. But Producer Azenberg knew things would be all right as soon as Simon passed him a scrawled note, now framed in Azenberg's office. In its unassuming way the note summed up Neil Simon, the resilient man, the sober craftsman and the confident artist. It read, "Don't worry. I know how to fix it."