Ethan Coen Quotes

Of course, 'True Grit' is a Western, but we never considered our film a classical Western and honestly never thought about genre at all. We didn't talk about John Ford or Sergio Leone, even though we like their films. Really, we were driven only by our enthusiasm for Charles Portis's book.

- Ethan Coen

'The Big Lebowski' was something we wrote for Jeff Bridges, and we set it aside for a couple of years because he wasn't available.

- Ethan Coen

We've always actually been remarkably commercially successful. Not in terms of making huge amounts of money, which we rarely do, but in terms of not losing money and making modest amounts of money. We're actually strangely consistent in that respect.

- Ethan Coen

You don't have to have a true story to make a true story movie.

- Ethan Coen

What is striking in Minnesota is the invisible horizon line. On a grey day, when there's snow on the ground, the sky and the ground are one tone. Everyone appears to be hanging in mid-air.

- Ethan Coen

Dave Van Ronk, for those who don't know him - probably most don't know - was a folk singer. He's kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up.

- Ethan Coen

We used to watch the muscle movies on Saturday matinees, such as 'Hercules Unchained.' Then we'd go outside and do a remake of it.

- Ethan Coen

Midwestern Jews is a different community, is a different thing than New York Jews, L.A. Jews. It's just different. It's the whole Midwestern thing.

- Ethan Coen

Whenever you're specific with ethnicity or religion, people find reason to take offence.

- Ethan Coen

It's important to tell the story you're telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity - or it might not.

- Ethan Coen

People respond to real problems from the heart.

- Ethan Coen

We don't outline, so we don't have prospective tasks to divide up. It's just, we start at the beginning and talk the first scene through, write it up, proceed to the next.

- Ethan Coen

All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.

- Ethan Coen

It's not that I don't like TV. It's alien to me. I haven't watched a television show in decades.

- Ethan Coen

I have never had feeling in my toes. My uncle, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, once told me in confidence he had the same syndrome, leading me to believe it is genetic.

- Ethan Coen

We loved the language in Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country,' which is really about the region, while in 'True Grit' it's more about period: people did speak more formally and floridly.

- Ethan Coen

We tend to do period stuff because it helps make it one step removed from boring everyday reality.

- Ethan Coen

The mountain music... is compelling music in its own right, harking back to a time when music was a part of everyday life and not something performed by celebrities.

- Ethan Coen

Being non-commercial is never an ambition. Movies come together at different points for fortuitous reasons. You do them as you get the opportunity, as opposed to doing them when you choose to or design to.

- Ethan Coen

When you're younger, you kind of assume you'll be fine at whatever. Then you get older, and you're either unsuccessful and you wonder why, or you're successful and you wonder why.

- Ethan Coen

'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.

- Ethan Coen

'Once Upon a Time in the West' is a great movie.

- Ethan Coen

I think some superstars feel they get trapped in their established screen persona over and over again. That's what they get hired to do.

- Ethan Coen

Don't bang your head against the wall about what you can't do.

- Ethan Coen

People are always curious about brothers working together.

- Ethan Coen

We go to the office every day when we're writing - or supposed to be writing. It's not always productive, and there's a lot of procrastinating, just staring at the wall, like any other writing. But we just make ourselves go to the office every day for more or less the whole day.

- Ethan Coen

As kids, we did see the Disney movies and the kids' adventure stories of the day.

- Ethan Coen

In 'True Grit,' we had a vulture, a trained vulture... that was a pain and that was - even by vulture standards - probably a stupid vulture, and that was frustrating.

- Ethan Coen

Like any kind of writing, there are good days and frustrating days. But even frustrating days can be rewarding sometimes.

- Ethan Coen

Two heads are better than none.

- Ethan Coen

Mainstream movies used to be more adventurous because people went to them.

- Ethan Coen

Oscars just ain't gonna do it for me anymore. I need the Nobel Peace Prize. The Oscars have worn off, man.

- Ethan Coen

Sergio Leone has this weird western opera thing.

- Ethan Coen

It's more interesting for me as an audience member to see a movie about a loser.

- Ethan Coen

There's something strange - not in a bad way - about going back to where you grew up or recreating where you grew up. It's strange and stimulating.

- Ethan Coen

With 'The Big Lebowski,' we were really consciously thinking about doing a Raymond Chandler story, as much as it's about L.A.

- Ethan Coen

You don't go around thinking about how characters in a movie, in the stories you make up, relate to people in general.

- Ethan Coen

That cowboy look - the hat and the bandana - that's not a fashion statement. That clothing is purely practical.

- Ethan Coen

It's tough being a Jew.

- Ethan Coen

It was never an ambition to grow up and win an Academy Award, so when it happens, you go, 'Weird!'

- Ethan Coen

'I Love You, Man' was kind of funny.

- Ethan Coen

Dave Van Ronk is not an obscure figure. He's the biggest figure on an obscure scene, playing a kind of niche music that we knew and liked.

- Ethan Coen

When the movie's done, you talk about either the score or source music over a particular scene, what might work. You just throw a piece of music over the scene, and we both listen to it.

- Ethan Coen

I mean, Joel talks to the actors more than I do and I probably do production stuff a little more than he does.

- Ethan Coen

A writer, by definition, is pathetic.

- Ethan Coen

There is some pleasure in doing a movie and problem solving on a specific movie and getting a movie made, but once they are done, we don't look at them again, much less relate one to another.

- Ethan Coen

It's very weird when people you know are in 'Star Wars.'

- Ethan Coen

That's interesting: people deriving their identities from their music.

- Ethan Coen

I don't know we have a method. We show up at the office. Is that a method? That's about the extent to which it's been formalized, asystematised. We show up at the office and talk, talk a scene through.

- Ethan Coen

It's always tempting to cast someone you enjoy being with. You've got to hang out with these people for a number of months.

- Ethan Coen

We're not big on taste. And actually, if you don't pander to undue sensitivities, then it ends up usually not being much of a problem.

- Ethan Coen

Whatever faith you have, you have that crisis: what am I doing?

- Ethan Coen

We haven't had to defend anything to anybody.

- Ethan Coen

There aren't reasons why you like this song or this piece of music, or don't like it. It's just, it's either right or wrong, you know?

- Ethan Coen

It's hard to get away from being old. I still talk about the TV set.

- Ethan Coen

Is this business any worse than any other business? It's not especially bad.

- Ethan Coen

We wouldn't have done it if we didn't think we could have fun with it.

- Ethan Coen

Barton Fink is just too self-important as an artist to get much sympathy.

- Ethan Coen