Ethan Coen
Ethan Coen

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

Ethan Coen
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
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
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
Ethan Coen

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

Ethan Coen
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
Ethan Coen

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
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
Ethan Coen

It's tough being a Jew.

Ethan Coen
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
Ethan Coen

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

Ethan Coen
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
Ethan Coen

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

Ethan Coen
Ethan Coen

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

Ethan Coen
Ethan Coen

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

Ethan Coen
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
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
Ethan Coen

Two heads are better than none.

Ethan Coen
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
Ethan Coen

We haven't had to defend anything to anybody.