Therefore, to successfully adapt a novel to screen, you must not only seek to turn the mental into the physical, but also be willing to reinvent. Feel free to cut scenes and if necessary, create new ones. Tell the story in filmic rhythms while keeping the spirit of the original, and ignore the risk that critics may say, “But the film’s not like the novel.”*
(Robert McKee)

It is difficult to tell whether our practical philanthropy is disturbed by the strength of our desires than chilled through the rigidity of our principles; disturbed by the egoism of our senses than by that of reason.**
(Friedrich Schiller)

There’s the “textbook” – be it paradigm, worldview, politics, philosophy, religion, script … .

And then there’s reality.

The two are rarely the same.

The beautiful possibility lies between, in the adaptation that is the product of an open mind, open heart and open will, rejecting rote observance in the one direction and anything goes in the other.

And the best paradigms, worldviews, politics, philosophies, religions and scripts, will always encourage us to adapt and produce something beautiful for others first of all, the best of freedoms will always want to produce form that makes good things available to others.

(*From Robert McKee‘s blog: The Problem with Adaptations.)
(**From Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man.)