Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

I wanted to be the conduit for somebody else's experiences, filtered through me, and passed on to other people. Which is the job description, really.

It's almost like an optical illusion, 'The Hobbit.' You look at the book, and it is really thin, and you could make a relatively thin film as well. What I mean by that is that you could race through the story at the speed that Tolkien does.

It is a major surgery. Major by any definition of the word.

Manners are nothing more than thinking about somebody else.