Cassandra Clare Quotes

I've done quite a few films that are based on books, and it's always nerve-wracking because there's an audience who has read and loved the book, and what if they see the movie and hate it?

It's tricky to take a book of short stories and turn it into a feature film.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

You have plausible deniability, as they say in politics, as an author with movies. Because if the movie is terrible, you simply say they failed to catch the genius of the book.

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

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

When you read the book, you paint the picture but when you adapt a book then the audience will, by and large, say the book was better and every filmmaker knows this.

I'm always worried about how fans of the books will react, but we have kept true to a lot of the books. Obviously there are changes, but with the books as a basis, hopefully the fans will like what we have done.

A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.

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

A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

Realistically, the chance of any book becoming a film is slim.

Sometimes I get to see a movie that's adapted from a book that I haven't heard about or that I love the movie so much that I will, of course, read the book.

Movies can't ruin books. They can only ruin movies.

It's hard to see a film that's been made from a book that you really loved because it's such a different experience.

Unfortunately, the author of a book pretty much gives up control of the story when the producers take over a book to make it into a movie.

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.

Authors of books are not given very much control over the films that are made from their books.

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.

'City of Bohane' has been optioned for film, and I've finished a first draft of the script.

I'm always interested to see what films are made of books. I kind of don't participate as a filmgoer in any kind of debate about what's better, the book or the movie. So I think it's interesting when people want to do it.

Any time you read a book and get attached to the characters, to me it's always a shock when it goes from page to screen and it's not exactly what was in my head or what I was imagining it should be.

Particularly when you're making a movie of a book, people are always waiting with their knives - you know?

I think successful movies that are based on books are their own thing. I think if you're too faithful, word by word, character trait to character trait, it can hurt the movie.

By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.