Michael Haneke Quotes

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.

As a filmmaker, you have to understand the essence of the book and tell the story you want to see on the screen, and hopefully please yourself - because you can't possibly please everyone.

A movie is a movie and a book is a book, and they have different rules.

You know, I feel like my job is to write a book. Then filmmakers come and they make a movie. And they're two really different art forms.

I think the novel is at one end of the art-entertainment continuum - the play in the middle - while TV and cinema veer a bit more towards entertainment.

When you want to transcribe an idea truthfully from the page to the screen, it is not necessarily best to be particularly literal about it. It can be hard to convince people, specifically writers, of that.

The only thing I can ever do is make a film that I can respond to. I could not make a romantic comedy for college girls. I wouldn't know how that works.

An adaptation leads the cinema-goer to the original to find out what they're missing and if they already know the book, it can still illuminate a theme, a character, an idea.

Rather than disliking theatre, I've expressed a preference for television because it tends to deal in its small way much more with issues and is able to reach a broader church of people than theatre.

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.

I mean, there are things in the book you could never do in a movie.

A lot of books, if you take them at face value, they're just not gonna work as films.

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.

There's no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television's much better than movies.

Some things work better as a book, some things work better as a story, some things works better as a film.

I've just had the opportunity to see the finished film of 'The Hunger Games.' I'm really happy with how it turned out. I feel like the book and the film are individual yet complementary pieces that enhance one another.

I have to write for everyone. What really fascinates me is how you make films or make stories that can genuinely be shared by different groups.

As a novelist, you have to realise that the novel and the film have to live separate lives. They're just different, like your kids, even if they look alike.

The script for 'Trainspotting' was amazing, and it was different from the book.

I always say film is art, theater is life and television is furniture.

There's a really fine line between artistic license and artistic licentiousness. And history is a lousy filmmaker. It doesn't give you all the ingredients you need. No story will quite fulfill that three-act structure.

The bane of every TV writer's existence is the likability note.

When you're writing for a game - even if you're using very well known characters like Batman and his villains who lend themselves to many different interpretations - you have to keep in mind that you're writing for a different medium. Things are a bit more straightforward than it is for a feature film or a TV show.

Our goal is to focus on the unique points of view of our show creators but make shows that have broad appeal.