Top 32 Best Coen Quotes
#1. I don't believe in director's cuts where you make things longer. The coolest thing was when the Coen brothers did a director's cut of 'Blood Simple,' and they made it shorter.
Jason Reitman
#2. Usually, I don't want to sit down and listen to the director gas on about his movie. I just can't actually imagine myself sitting down and having that much to say.
Joel Coen
#3. My heroes are guys like Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I've always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years.
Les Claypool
#4. There is the moral spectrum in 'Fargo,' and you see it in other Coen brothers movies, where you have a very good character on one end and a very bad character on the other.
Noah Hawley
#5. I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.
Spike Jonze
#6. Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.
Ethan Coen
#7. We have an uncanny ability to make birds do what we want them to do. In Blood Simple there's a shot from the bumper of a car and it's going up this road and a huge flock of birds takes off at the perfect moment.
Joel Coen
#8. Like any kind of writing, there are good days and frustrating days. But even frustrating days can be rewarding sometimes.
Ethan Coen
#9. Well, ain't it a small world, spiritually speaking? Pete and Delmar just been baptized and saved. I guess I'm the only one that remains unaffiliated.
Joel Coen
#10. I always wished there was somebody like the Coen Brothers and they appeared. And so yeah, my favorite role that I've ever done was in The Man Who Wasn't There. That's my very favorite character I've ever played.
Billy Bob Thornton
#11. It's a funny thing because you look at the careers of other filmmakers, and you see them sort of slow down, and you realize, maybe this becomes harder to do as you get older. That's sort of a cautionary thing. I hope it doesn't happen to me.
Joel Coen
#12. Our mother was a very religious and observant Jew, our father less so. She was kind of driving the religious education, so for us it was more a burden and an obligation when we were kids at that age.
Joel Coen
#13. 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
#14. Maybe our telling of the story wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I don't think that's true. In terms of understanding the story, it comes across.
Joel Coen
#15. The architecture of a story can be a little bit different if it's a true story.
Joel Coen
#16. 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
#17. I am a big fan of the Coen Brothers; I like their kind of absurd, dark approach.
Volker Bertelmann
#18. I always say, I'm certain I changed 'Watchmen' less than the Coen brothers changed 'No Country for Old Men.' I'm certain of it. But you don't hear the Cormac McCarthy fans, like, up in arms about it. They should be. It's like an amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning book.
Zack Snyder
#19. I really respect the Coen brothers as directors and as creative individuals and with the way that they handle the industry and the business side of things.
Allison Tolman
#20. If the material is challenging, it forces you to challenge yourself when handling it.
Joel Coen
#21. The question is: Where would it get you if something that's a little bit ambiguous in the movie is made clear? It doesn't get you anywhere.
Joel Coen
#22. I like the absurd and the surreal: the Coen brothers, Bunuel, Kubrick.
Kevin McCloud
#23. I was always interested in movies the way everyone is interested. That is, I liked to go to the movies
Ethan Coen
#24. I've never really understood that. It's a funny thing; people sometimes accuse us of condescending to our characters somehow-that to me is kind of inexplicable.
Joel Coen
#25. We create monsters and then we can't control them.
Joel Coen
#26. I guess everything having to do with your background has some influence on how you tell stories but it's hard to parse how growing up in a Jewish community in Minnesota really affected it.
Joel Coen
#27. I'm not a very efficient filmmaker. There's a lot of guys, filmmakers like the Coen Brothers who shoot a whole movie and maybe don't use 12 setups. I'm in awe of people like that; I'm just not that guy.
Andrew Dominik
#28. I guess it beats throwing trash for a living.
Joel Coen
#29. I guess there's a certain amount of poking fun at certain characters, but that's because there is something amusing about them or about the way they behave, so I guess you can say that that's poking fun at the character. But the character is your own invention, so who cares?
Joel Coen
#30. Look at the Coen brothers. All their minor characters are as interesting as their protagonists. If the smaller characters are well-written, the whole world of the film becomes enriched. It's not the size of the thing, but the detail.
Brendan Gleeson
#31. Yeah? Well, you know, that's just uh like, your opinion man.
~The Dude~ The Big Lebowski
Joel And Ethan Coen
#32. As a director, I do very few takes, because I feel like you hire the right actor and they'll do the job right. And the directors that I've worked with and had the best luck with - Jason and [ Steven] Soderbergh and the Coen brothers - all have been that kind of director.
George Clooney
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top