Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

You take some creative license when you make a movie, and things can be a little bit different.

It's kind of a test when you read a novel thinking about its potential for the screen: How does it play on your mind's screen?

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.

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.

I'm always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a book and they leave the book behind, or the heart of it.

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 thought I understood the story very well, because I've lived with it for so long. But movies change and take on a life of their own once they start to be made, and you have to keep your eye on the real ball, not the ball that's in your head.

As long as they're making beloved books into movies, people are going to be like, 'That's not my mental image of them.' It takes that moment for it to click and become their mental image.

It is customary for the writer to sneer that Hollywood has traduced their book. Well, I adore my film.

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

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

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.

A lot of writers want everything put on screen, but it doesn't work like that. The screenwriter brings her own imaginative interpretation, just as the director and actors do.

The best adaptations are the ones that really excavate the material. The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing and put it into a story.

Working on an adaptation is not as satisfying, because it's not your original work: you're interpreting. With 'L.A. Confidential,' I loved the book. In that case, I felt I was guardian of the work, staying as true to the novel as I could. I've since met the novelist, and he loves the movie and the script.

If you write an original, it's like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, it's like the oil well's on fire, and they bring you in to put the fire out and get it working again - or something like that.

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.

Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.

Every time I read a script, I see the movie in my head, and I try to see the best movie in my head because everybody interprets the movie differently.

For me, I get a part of an idea here and a little bit of an idea there, and then finally it accumulates into a movie.

Some movies bring out the creativity in you. Every single audience member can become creative in the face of a particular movie. If you happen to like my films, it's because my films provide a bed for you on which you can find your creativity. The Hollywood movies do not provide that for you.

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

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

The most important thing when you do a movie is that you find an audience that really understands what you want to do and is really supportive of it.

Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan, and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.'