Lorenzo di Bonaventura Quotes

I look at all of world mythology and folklore as my toy to play with. There are just so many characters and creatures there I want to put on paper. It's a really exciting thing for me to take material that I really love and put a new coat of paint on it and present it to this audience. And I don't have to make up any of the characters. I can just pull a book of mythology off the shelf and say, "I'll use this guy." I also hate making up names for fantasy characters. I'll just flip through these books and say, "Wow, this is way crazier than anything I could make up".

You have so many sources to draw on when you're a fantasy writer.

To me, my favorite comic book movies were the ones that were never based on comic books, like Unforgiven. That's more the kind of thing that get us inspired. Usually when you say something's a comic book movie, it means you turn on the purple and green lights. Suddenly that means it's more like a comic book, and It's not really like that.

Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations.

Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.

I have so many themes I want to explore, so many questions I'd like to raise and develop, and hopefully, I'll get to do just that.

It's very hard to adapt something. You end up changing it too much to make a good movie out of it. I prefer to work with things that are custom made for my kind of animation.

What I think happens, and that you have to acknowledge though, is that a director uses a book as a launching pad for his own work and that's always very flattering.

I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.

My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they've read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!

I think I'm a born storyteller. Inspiration is all around me. I can read a newspaper article and come up with an idea for a book.

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

What Peter Jackson proved with 'Lord Of The Rings' movies is that you could make various changes, and you could pull things around, but as long as it was in the spirit of the storytelling, and because he made The Shire so real, the fans forgave him for the changes.

I don't have a specific message for 'The Grace of Kings' and the sequels in mind other than wanting to challenge some of the source material I was working from as well as some of the assumptions of epic fantasy.

I appreciate hearing different stories. It inspires me.

Adapting a book doesn't mean the book stops just because you've made a film out of it.

I think comics can be the basis for great films, but I think the focus of such a project should be on making the film as good as possible, not on painstakingly replicating the comic.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. Their random combinations are driven by forces we don't know about.

I don't think it's a mistake to put every great idea into the first movie, because I've always said there won't be a second movie if you go 'we'll hold back these ideas for another one.

It is my belief that books are living things.

There is no right or wrong way to tell a story. You have to find your own way. You can get your idea from listening, looking, or imagining. Stories are everywhere. All you have to do is pay attention.

When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.

I've often written about places that are totally different from anything I know. Sometimes they turn out better.

My imagination doesn't require anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander.