Quotes from Ethan Coen

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

People are always curious about brothers working together.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Fuck it, Dude.

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.

A writer, by definition, is pathetic.

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

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.

'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.

It's tough being a Jew.

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.

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

It's just an impulse, in some actors. You want to make the audience like you. That's the aim of the exercise.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Two heads are better than none.