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. ”

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

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

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. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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 have to have a true story to make a true story movie. ”

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

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. ”