Book To Film Quotes

#1. The thing is when you play a character it's the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there's gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it's the personality that comes across.

Alex Pettyfer

#2. I adore book-to-film adaptations when they're done well, and I'm more lenient than many readers when it comes to what counts as 'done well.' For me, the most important thing is that the film maintains the spirit of the original book.

Maggie Stiefvater

#3. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me-I still watch silent films. I don't think that there is any such thing as an old film; you don't say, 'I read an old book by Flaubert,' or 'I saw an old play by Moliere.'

Alain Resnais

#4. It was beguiling to live in a country, Scotland, that didn't look enough like itself to be a location for its own movies ... I remember consulting a film book and discovering that Arthur Freed decided to shoot Brigadoon in Hollywood because nowhere in Scotland looked Scottish enough.

Andrew O'Hagan

#5. As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.

Iain Banks

#6. To me film school was film history because there weren't a lot of books out there that I had access to.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

#7. In America, film is the highest form of art that the public aspires to. People will come to me and say 'Oh, your book was so good, they ought to make a movie out of it!' To which I reply 'Well, why? It's already a book.

Orson Scott Card

#8. There's something really fun about being scared, and I guess that was at least part of why I wanted to film certain scenes from my new book, 'Skeleton Creek.'

Patrick Carman

#9. Because even very young people are expert readers of pictures, you can convey very complex and subtle messages through pictures that you'd need loads of words to explain. Making a picture book is also a bit like making your own film - and you can make anything you want happen, however impossible!

Mini Grey

#10. Most people don't know how to find the answers, so here how I do it. I just read a book or a film about the topic and I found a lot

Deyth Banger

#11. I think intellectualism can be a barrier to reading. The point of a book - song, film, whatever - is to FEEL it. That's why we're here, no?

Matt Haig

#12. CUSTOMER: You know that film, Coraline?
BOOKSELLER: Yes, indeed.
CUSTOMER: My daughter loves it. Are they going to make it into a book?

Jen Campbell

#13. When you adapt a book to a film, you take all the best parts and put them into an hour and 15 minutes and have to compromise on the characters.

Channing Tatum

#14. If you are making a script based on a book it can be frustrating going back to the source novel, because you're turning the story into a totally different thing; the narrative of film is different from that of a book.

Clive Owen

#15. I look at the film without any music or sound. I try to grasp the story from the screenplay. I try to write to the novel or book if there is one. I try to create music that's honest and true to my heart for the story.

Howard Shore

#16. If I know the end of a book or a film I want to know why it happen...

Deyth Banger

#17. A writer of books has to admit that film is the enemy, and that in my case I have been sleeping with the enemy.

E.L. Doctorow

#18. For me, each book is kind of like a silent film. If you were to remove the words and just look at the pictures, you should be able to tell what the story is about without having to read a word of text. That's what I think I brought from doing artwork for film to doing artwork for books.

Kadir Nelson

#19. In 1916, Universal Studios released the first filmed adaptation of Jules Verne's novel '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.' Georges Melies made a film by that name in 1907, but, unlike his earlier adaptations of Verne, Melies' version bears no resemblance to the book.

Kage Baker

#20. Usually the script is much more funny than the film turns out to be, in my case. The script is almost like a comic book but when you start making it, for some reason the film gets very serious.

Dagur Kari

#21. Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book?

Spike Jonze

#22. 'Coraline' is Neil Gaiman's book, it sold a lot, it has a big fan base. It was originally conceived to be live action, but I never really wanted it to be. I always thought that it would work better as an animated film.

Henry Selick

#23. If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it's a failure. That is what I think.

Marjane Satrapi

#24. The most attention I get is in a book store or video shop when I go to the foreign film section. Sometimes that can be fun, but usually those women want to talk about philosophy or something very dense. It's not like they're tearing off my shirt, you know.

Tobey Maguire

#25. Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.

William S. Burroughs

#26. If you just read Joseph Campbell, who has written amazing books on mythology and religion, they all do come together at some point. There are some of the greatest stories that there have ever been in the Bible. All you have to do is read the book of Maccabi, it's like a film script.

Mel Gibson

#27. I was starstruck and completely confused; making a film of this story hadn't even occurred to me, and I hadn't written a single line of the book yet. I had no idea how this man knew anything about my book proposal.

Laura Hillenbrand

#28. It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, and I hadn't even read the book. So I read it and I liked it very much and I knew I'd certainly like to do it.

Bille August

#29. The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.

Stanley Kubrick

#30. I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.

Dustin Hoffman

#31. Going out at night and having a fabulous social life takes a lot out of you, and I don't know if I have that much to give, honestly. I would rather give that time to my kids or spend that time reading a book or watching a film. I am selfish and lazy.

Kajol

#32. I've just had the opportunity to see the finished film of 'The Hunger Games.' I'm really happy with how it turned out. I feel like the book and the film are individual yet complementary pieces that enhance one another.

Suzanne Collins

#33. Anyt hing that is found to stimulate hope should be seized upon and make to serve. This applies to a book, a film, a broadcast, or a conversation with someone who can impart it.

Hubert Van Zeller

#34. I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb.

Dave McKean

#35. You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.

Paul Auster

#36. Always, with any movie that I do, I have a book of ideas that I've heard, or seen, or whatever, and I always try to incorporate it in the film.

Adrian Lyne

#37. I think the book struck me in a few ways that I thought very interesting to pick it as my first martial arts film. It has a very strong female character and it was very abundant in classic Chinese textures.

Ang Lee

#38. Escaping into a film is not like escaping into a book. Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination, where as you can watch a film-and even enjoy it-in a state of mindless passivity.

Paul Auster

#39. Unlike the book, with a documentary, you get a chance to show much more texture and color. Film gives you get a chance to focus on much more individuals who are pivotal in changing the landscape of American culture.

Steve Stoute

#40. I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film. Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.

Alan Lightman

#41. Everyone reads a different book. That's what's interesting. Everyone sees a different film, as well. We bring our past lives to whatever work of art we're experiencing at that moment, and that's what makes it interesting. It's not mathematics. There are different answers for different people.

Paul Auster

#42. When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#43. They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25, and it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.

Christopher Tolkien

#44. Richard Price got a million dollar advance on one fake film book based on a paragraph outline and is able to seduce gullible White reviewers who know less about ghetto life than he. The New York Times has devoted more space to Price's tourist, ghetto writing than to any Black writer in history.

Ishmael Reed

#45. With stand-up, I can have an idea, go down the street to a comedy club and work on it, flesh it out, book a venue, people will come, then film it. I do all that myself; I never have to answer to anybody.

Aziz Ansari

#46. If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.

Miranda Otto

#47. The general effect of viewing 'Jumanji' is thrilling. I was able to see on film a thing that at one point had only existed in my imagination. I got to see the images from my book come alive.

Chris Van Allsburg

#48. And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

Milan Kundera

#49. I think everyone is introduced to the Peter Pan story when they're very young. Everyone has read the book and watched the Disney film and all that.

Charlie Rowe

#50. Anyone wishing to buy the film rights for a rather large sum can contact my publisher and anyone wishing to put me in the top 100 wealthiest people in the UK, please send cheques or Postal Orders to me care of my publisher.

James Berryman

#51. With a book you can read the same paragraph four times. You can go back to page 21 when you're on page 300. You can't do that with film. It just charges ahead.

Jonathan Lethem

#52. Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading.

Igor Stravinsky

#53. It's a difficult thing when you try and make a film of a book that you really love. You have about two hours to tell the story, and it's never going to be enough.

Keira Knightley

#54. My main point about films is that I don't like the adaptation process, and I particularly don't like the modern way of comic book-film adaptations, where, essentially, the central characters are just franchises that can be worked endlessly to no apparent point.

Alan Moore

#55. There's only one test of a great children's book, or a great children's film, and that is this: If it can be read or viewed with pleasure by adults, then it has the chance to be a great children's film, or a great children's book.

Chuck Jones

#56. How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.

John Banville

#57. I love escaping into film, because everyday life I find quite troublesome. So any excuse to go into a cinema and say goodbye to the world for a couple of hours, or in a book or whatever, is great.

Alison Goldfrapp

#58. Yes, the Bechdel Test. It's named for Allison Bechdel, who is a comic book creator. The test is, are there two named women in the film? Do they talk to each other? And is it about something other than a man? I actually think the Bechdel Test is a little advanced for us sometimes.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

#59. I saw a film today, oh boy,
The English army had just won the war,
A crowd of people turned away,
But I just had to look, having read the book ...

The Beatles

#60. Other people's creativity inspires me. Seeing great art, or reading a fab book or watching an interesting documentary or an exciting film - these things make me want to let my own imagination fly.

Kate Cary

#61. It's sort of an organic process when you're adapting any book, not even just your own. You want to preserve the heart of the story and you want to preserve who the characters are, but film requires a lot of compression.

Jonathan Tropper

#62. I have had several offers to make the book into a film. I don't know if the message could be accurately transmitted, and so I have been somewhat hesitant in granting film rights.

Frederick Lenz

#63. Unlike a book or a film depression doesn't have to be about something.

Matt Haig

#64. Yeah, when you're making a film, the book is a good tool, but once you have the script and you're making a movie, you have to let go of the book.

Jennifer Lawrence

#65. All I can say is that I am not one of those writers who want 100% of their book in the film. I recognize that film is a different medium and the filmmaker must have the right to bring some new elements to the table, provided the soul of the book is preserved.

Vikas Swarup

#66. I don't subscribe to the school of thought that as a feature film producer I shouldn't dabble in television, web content, or even comic books ...

Adi Shankar

#67. Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will take what she needs from the book and leave out other things. With adaptations, you never get the texture of the writing: it's a different mode.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#68. I discovered you can get closer to a character's thoughts and feelings in a book than in a film.

Morris Gleitzman

#69. And the book... and the work.. and the life goes to the whole beginning... and trying to answer how in real did we met.

(Mr.Nobody, No One Tell)

Deyth Banger

#70. You might have a favorite book or film, but you can only watch or read it so many times before you have to let it sit and then go back and realize it's your favorite still. At some point everything gets a little stale and you have to step away from it.

Les Claypool

#71. With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.

Emma Donoghue

#72. The sad thing about reading the book and then watching the movie is that they have to die all over again.

Joyce Rachelle

#73. There were days when you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald. Video was out, but nobody could afford it ... expect for my uncle George, who was a second father to me, and had every film in the world, and every book.

William Monahan

#74. When you convert a good book to a film. stupid things happen

Jesse Andrews

#75. The change starts when you start watching a video. You don't see it, you don't feel it but it starts at this moment, just by reading a complicated book or watching a film you again change... It's a fact!

Deyth Banger

#76. I'm excited about how books work in a digital age. When you read a book, unlike a film, you are decoding symbols in order to 'see' the story, so it is collaborative in a way that a film can never be.

Steven Hall

#77. After all it was for one justice which is short..., but the journey up to this justice was very long.
(Red 2008 Film)

Deyth Banger

#78. The difficulty with film is you always have to consign a story to being a certain length, whereas with a book you don't have budget constraints; you can cast it yourself.

Emilia Fox

#79. 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.

Ed Harris

#80. When I read the book [The Adderall Diaries] I loved it, and I maybe had an inkling that there was a lot of good material in there. I didn't quite know at the time how to adapt it into a film, but I hoped I would figure it out one day.

James Franco

#81. A book is one kind of an art form and a film is a different art form. I think as a writer you just have to say, well the book is one thing, and the film is a completely different one.

Lisa See

#82. The secret to all drama, film, TV, or books - the thing that people respond to most, and the thing I find myself as a viewer feeling most interested in, is the idea of change.

Jonathan Nolan

#83. 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.

Chuck Palahniuk

#84. The director is planning on titling the film 'Yummy Fur' so we are probably planning on changing the title of the book to 'Yummy Fur' to match the film.

Chester Brown

#85. If you get a book which is 600 pages, you have to reduce it to a script of 100 pages. In two hours of film, you cannot possibly include all the characters.

Dino De Laurentiis

#86. I think writing a book with film in mind is a way to write a really bad books. You can usually tell those books that are packaged to become films.

Charlize Theron

#87. And so we continued to live in fear, hoping that we would not get caught. Fear had become our constant companion at this dreadful Lashkar-e-Taiba camp.

Vivek Pereira

#88. I think it's counterproductive for actors to come to the set with well-thumbed copies of the book their film is adapted from.

Charles Dance

#89. I'm not of the opinion that the next logical step for a book is for it to be made into a film.

Jasper Fforde

#90. Loving and appreciative, researched to a fare-thee-well, and pitched to both fans and first-time viewers of Singin' in the Rain, this delightful book delivers almost as much fun as the film itself.

Jeanine Basinger

#91. I grew up reading the 'Village Voice' and wanting to be one of these multidisciplinary music writers, film writers, book writers. And I lucked out getting a job at the 'Voice' right after college.

Colson Whitehead

#92. If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

Christopher Hampton

#93. Lord of the Rings was something I always wanted to do. I read the book when I was about 25, and I was always hoping if it was ever made into a feature film that I would be involved in some way. And then I finally got it, and I was over the moon. It was fantastic news.

Sean Bean

#94. It's not the same thing to make a work - a film, a book, a play - about youth as it is to make one about old age.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

#95. Take time to enjoy the flight - read a good book, watch a film, catch up on emails and sleep.

Orlando Bloom

#96. The book is a film that takes place in the mind of the reader. That's why we go to movies and say, Oh, the book is better.

Paulo Coelho

#97. 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.

Nicholas Sparks

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

Charlotte Rampling

#99. Everything I've wanted to turn into a film becomes something new and different when it becomes a movie ... Each time I work with an author, I say to them, 'A book and a movie are different things.'

Jason Reitman

#100. I'd love to do an action film. I'd love to do a film based on a book series; I love to read the book and then go see the movie. I'd love to have a show on Disney; I love working for them. And I'm also working on getting some new music out of my own.

Katherine McNamara