45 Quotes by Joel Coen

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.

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.

Sometimes, in certain stories, I think we know at the outset essentially what the tone is going to be, or it becomes important that we're groping toward some kind of story with a certain kind of tone that we both get somehow. But I don't think how that's combined with other elements is ever in any way overtly discussed.

You see a moral in them? Do we have morals?

Barton Fink got written very quickly, in about three weeks. I don't know what that means.

These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.

The architecture of a story can be a little bit different if it's a true story.

I think when you watch the dailies, the film that you shoot every day, you're very excited by it and very optimistic about how it's going to work.

We don't have any rules about how we depict violence, or how much violence is in a movie. It's a calibration on a case-by-case basis.