Quotes from Simon Beaufoy

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

You write who you are somehow. Even if you try to not to. You can't help but write who you are. I'm just not a very cynical person. I believe in the humanity of people, whether it is just the guys in 'The Full Monty' or Aron Ralston.

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.

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

In the midst of global recession, in the face of uncertainty about what's going to happen next, film looks for inspiration to real people.

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.

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

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.

What's important in the filmmaking process has stayed the same. Keep it small, keep it personal, keep it authentic, work with people you like and trust. That process is much longer than the filmmaking process. The development process is a long one, so try and say something of importance.

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

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

India is desperately romantic, utterly unashamed of its sentimentality, its generosity, its fierce pride and massive heart.

When you make a movie, a dramatization based on the real experience of a living subject, you can't airbrush that away into to a perfect movie arc.

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.