Simon Beaufoy

I think you are doing a disservice to a novel just by transposing it wholesale onto the screen, because it doesn't work. They are completely different beasts.

Miley Cyrus twerking - is that really a model for your kids?

British audiences are toughest on British films. So often, a British film is the last thing they want to see. If you please them, you really know you've made an impact.

Being rich would be disastrous for me as a writer. I have always needed to write to pay the bills.

'The Full Monty' was my first feature script, and I wasn't that skilled at it.

If you've been nominated for an Oscar, it would be ridiculous to say you didn't want to win. It would be lovely to have one of those statues.

If you work in the studio system in America, they've almost got to the point where a computer programme could write scripts. Effectively, they hire and fire enough writers until they get something generic.

I'm not interested in superheroes. What about normal people doing extraordinary things?

Everyone's got a boulder in their life of one sort or another that they need to overcome. For most people, it's not a literal one, but there are certainly metaphorical ones.

I've been in electric storms in the mountains. Scary things.

After a while, you become really irritated that you're not recognised as the person who wrote 'The Full Monty.' Everyone goes on about how lovely the characters are. That's because they were written! 'What a clever title.' Yeah, that's because I made up the title!

I used to live on a barge - it is incredibly good to write near water. There is an ever-changing landscape, so you never get bored.

I have a huge admiration for the ability of people to go, 'I don't care if it can't happen. I don't care if you say it's impossible. I am gonna do it anyway.' I think it's an amazing part of human nature. It feeds into faith and belief in human beings to not only do the improbable but almost the impossible.

Everyone hated the title 'The Full Monty' until they saw the film did really well and then loved the title.

The recession of the late 1980s was a very visible humiliation. Cities across Britain had become the victims of botched battlefield surgery - surgery that involved the ripping up of factories, the flattening of buildings, and the razing of the Victorian heritage of heavy labour.

When you haven't got a job, a joke is about the only thing that's free.

It's a huge responsibility writing about people who are alive. It's the thing about writing that keeps me awake at night: dramatising real-life events with real people.

It's a very weird thing, making a true story, because you need your freedom, as filmmakers, to do what you need to do.

In life, unlike in movies, people don't change - what's the word I'm looking for? - absolutely. They change a bit, slowly.

The West has become very sophisticated, seeing love as a very complex thing. In Bollywood, it's not complex: it's an arrow straight to the heart.

Repressed English writers have to write love stories because they can't say what they really mean.

In times of trial, for inspiration, people want to look to real people rather than to fiction.

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.

I'm very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk.

I just can't get excited about money as a motivation in a film. It leaves me cold.