Ethan Coen

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A writer, by definition, is pathetic.

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

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

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