Adapting Novels Quotes

When you're adapting a novel, there are always scenes taken out of the book, and no matter which scenes they are, it's always someone's favorite. As a screenwriter, you realize, 'Well, it doesn't work if you include everyone's favorite scenes.'

I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."

After so many attempts to mount a musical version of 'Lolita,' the project was well and truly dead by the summer of 1971. Chief among those relieved: Vladimir Nabokov.

If you made a movie of 'Sharp Objects,' chances are that it would be a smaller film, but as a TV show, it can reach a lot of people.

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel.

I think the one that's going to be the hardest to make into a film is the one that's probably going to be made into a film, which is 'The Art of Racing in the Rain.' I mean, it's narrated by a dog. How do you do that? But hopefully we'll get to see.

It's always a challenge to adapt a novel for screen, a visual medium.

I'd love to adapt more contemporary novels. But there isn't really enough story and character to make a really satisfying serial, so they tend to be single dramas.