Book Adaptation Quotes

It was a really strange and unique sort of process for me to adapt my own book.

I read the 'Twilight' books before the movie and the whole craze happened. And then I loved it. I was in love with Edward before every other girl that says she's in love with him was. Because I read them a long time ago shooting a movie in Salt Lake City, and one of Stephenie Meyer's friends said, 'Make sure you read my friend's book.'

'The Stand' was great. Adapted by Stephen King from his massive book.

I thought The Shining was just absolutely wonderful. Stephen King reaches all kinds of people. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which was terrible.

Wildlife was the only thing we've written together with Paul Dano. It's based on a book by this author Richard Ford, who just published a memoir about his family that's really wonderful. Paul fell in love with his book, and we optioned it ourselves, and he took a first pass at writing it. He asked me for notes, and then our note session devolved into an argument really quickly.

I've never read a script that I've loved equally and differently to the book.

'The Dovekeepers' is a fantastic novel written by Alice Hoffman; it was a bestselling novel, and I fell in love with the book and bought the rights to it.

A film based on a jolly good John Grisham book is fine, but I like to get a bit under the skin.

'Underworld' was my first filmed book. I think there are about seven of my lines in it.

When I got the script for 'Eclipse,' I thought it was a damn good story.

They're still working on the script - they've got to get that nailed down and they want the first movie to come out obviously, not get too ahead of themselves. But yeah, it's looking good. I love the second book a lot as well, so kind of diving into that is awesome.

You shouldn't think of these movies as being 'The Lord of the Rings.' The Lord of the Rings is, and always will be, a wonderful book - one of the greatest ever written. Any films will only ever be an INTERPRETATION of the book. In this case my interpretation.

It's never easy to adapt a book, especially as the author, because it's as if you're chopping off appendages. It really feels painful to decide what has to go.

It's interesting because when David Fincher was making "Fight Club," he said, "It's a romance." And it really is. Almost everything I ever write is just a romance. And that needed to be sort of pointed up at the end of "Fight Club." The film has a very different ending than the book does.

I think the books are the books. They were conceived as books. They weren't conceived as movies. When I write scripts, that's an idea and a situation that I think is a really good idea for a movie. When I'm writing a book, I'm not thinking, "Oh, this would be a great movie." This would be a very interesting book. And I think the books are things that cannot really be adapted into another medium.

Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes.

'The Silence of the Lambs' is my favourite book, favourite film.

You ever talk about a movie with someone that read the book? They're always so condescending. 'Ah, the book was much better than the movie.' Oh really? What I enjoyed about the movie: no reading.

I dont like any of them, because they don't read the books. In Kiss Me Deadly my story is better than his story. Anthony Quinn played in The Lond Wait and he didn't read the book either.

My theory in the '90s was that I didn't want to take a Jane Austen book I loved and reduce it to a 90-minute movie. The Emma Thompson-Ang Lee 'Sense and Sensibility' was beautiful, but other ones, I didn't think justice was being done. It's not a slam dunk to adapt these books.

I was shocked that I even got the opportunity to audition for 'A Wrinkle in Time.' Meg Murry is a Caucasian girl in the book.

To be quite honest, I've been very blessed when I've worked with Hollywood. The studios that have purchased my work to be adapted to film have really liked the work and wanted to stay as close as they could to what the book was.

I'm not a big 'Moneyball' fan.

I've made movies that were adaptations and I've been kind of frustrated by the process because, you know that old axiom, 'It's never as good as the book'? It's often true because nothing competes with your own imagination. When you're reading a book and you imagine something in your head, nothing's going to compete with that.