Adaptation Quotes - Page 5

• Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

  Christopher Hampton

  Couple, Reading, Thinking

  "My week" by Christopher Hampton, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2009.

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• Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.

  Bell Hooks

  Different, Littles, Arena

  "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center". Book by Bell Hooks, 1984.

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• Most writers are unhappy with film adaptations of their work, and rightly so. 'Field of Dreams,' however, caught the spirit and essence of 'Shoeless Joe' while making the necessary changes to make the work more visual.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Dream, Essence, Unhappy

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• Every mutation through a new combination of genetic factors that provides the organism with a new opportunity for coming to terms with the conditions of its environment signifies no more and no less than that new information about this environment has got into that organic system. Adaptation is essentially a cognitive process.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Opportunity, Mutation, Information

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• The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.

  Milan Kundera

  Crazy, Book, Writing

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• Once we start seeing video games that have more memorable characters, you'll see better movie adaptations.

  David S. Goyer

  Memorable, Character, Games

  "David S. Goyer talks Dark Knight, Superman and Call of Duty: Black Ops" by Stuart Dredge, www.theguardian.com. September 24, 2013.

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• It’s a lovely adaptation that honors Lois Lowry’s vision and authority…the film…illuminates and explores the beauty, danger and pain of our free, creative lives. Plenty to talk about in families and other communities. Go see it.

  Mitali Perkins

  Pain, Creative, Community

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• There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).

  Tim Harford

  Thinking, Enemy, Firsts

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• The Constitution remains brilliant in its overall design and sound with respect to the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers. But there are numerous archaic provisions that inhibit constructive change and adaptation. These constitutional bits affect the daily life of the republic and every citizen in it.

  Larry Sabato

  Rights, Design, Republic

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• Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and the inorganic world are ... bound together by such mutual relations and adaptations s secure, if not the absolute permanence and equilibrium of both ... at least a very slow and gradual succession of changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords.

  George Perkins Marsh

  Nature, Science, Men

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• At the Global Crop Diversity Trust, we work to conserve the diversity that will allow the adaptation and evolution of our agricultural crops in the context of climate change and other challenges.

  Cary Fowler

  Diversity, Challenges, Climate

  "Will the Copenhagen Climate Talks Connect Two 150-Year-Old Dots?" by Cary Fowler, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

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• Space is an environment of emptiness. It offers no possibility for natural adaptation to any living organism - and particularly not to the highly sophisticated creature, man. Yet man has the ability to resolve this paradox through his intellectual power and creative faculties.

  Hubertus Strughold

  Men, Medicine, Space

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• Yes, I am one of those people who feels that most of my work is adaptation of one sort or another. For me, it's a way to jump-start the engine. For example, some people use the technique of basing a character on a friend. They start writing with his or her voice, then at a certain point, the character takes off on his or her own. It probably no longer resembles the model, but it helped the author to get going. I find that's true of form, too. For every play I've written, I know what play I was trying to imitate. That helps me get going.

  David Henry Hwang

  Writing, Character, Play

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• I've quit writing screenplay [adaptations]. It's too much work. I don't look at writing a novel as work, because I only have to please myself. I have a good time sitting here by myself, thinking up situations and characters, getting them to talk - it's so satisfying. But screenwriting's different. You might think you're writing for yourself, but there are too many other people to please.

  Elmore Leonard

  Writing, Character, Thinking

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• As far as life is concerned, there is no such thing as "Nature". There are only homes. Home is that environment to which the individual has become adapted; and almost everything is unnatural outside his range of adaptation. Harmonious equilibrium with nature is an abstract concept with a Platonic beauty but lacking the flesh and blood of life. It fails, in particular, to convey the creative emergent quality of human existence.

  Rene Dubos

  Life, Home, Blood

  René Jules Dubos (1987). “Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change”, p.28, Rutgers University Press

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• . . . I wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.

  Laurie Anderson

  Book, Yes You Can, Ideas

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• What is evolution if not creative adaptation and the progression of our own souls?

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Creative, Soul, Evolution

  Terry Tempest Williams (2012). “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice”, p.52, Macmillan

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• My familiarity with the successful use of very long steel ropes for mining purposes naturally suggested their adaptation to the new purpose of deep sea work.

  Alexander Agassiz

  Ocean, Successful, Sea

  Alexander Agassiz (1888). “A Contribution to American Thalassography: Three Cruises of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Steameer "Blake", in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Caribbean Sea, and Along the Atlantic Coast of the United States, from 1877 to 1880”

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• Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.

  Learned Hand

  Law, Justice, Common

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• The truth is that I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books for the screen.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Book, Novelists, Truth Is

  "The Conversation - Kurosawa and Garcia Marquez". articles.latimes.com. June 23, 1991.

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• Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed.

  Jean M. Auel

  Individuality, World, Life Is

  Jean M. Auel (2013). “The Earth's Children Series 6-Book Bundle: The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, The Plains of Passage, The Shelters of Stone, The Land of Painted Caves”, p.1963, Bantam

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• But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.

  Michael Crichton

  Teaching, Animal, Dna

  Michael Crichton (1996). “The lost world”

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• Totalitarianism extends to whatever touches it...psychological technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves a psychological adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods, supervision of family life, and training family life for military or industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization. Everything is its concern. Technique, which is destroying all other civilizations, is more than a simple mechanism: it's a whole civilization in itself.

  Jacques Ellul

  Military, Army, Technology

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• The laws of Coexistence;-the adaptation of structure to function; and to a certain extent the elucidation of natural affinities may be legitimately founded upon the examination of fully developed species;-But to obtain an insight into the laws of development,-the signification or bedeutung, of the parts of an animal body demands a patient examination of the successive stages of their development, in every group of Animals.

  Richard Owen

  Science, Animal, Law

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• Adaptation is the only means to reduce the now-unavoidable costs of climate change over the next few decades

  Nicholas Stern

  Mean, Climate, Cost

  Nicholas Stern, Great Britain. Treasury (2007). “The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review”, p.319, Cambridge University Press

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