Quotes By Carter Burwell

Big Sur is at the end of the continent. It attracts really crazy people.

Performing written music, even when I've written it, is not very interesting to me.

Conducting, I tried it once off the cuff, and quickly realized there were subtle aspects that I was missing. There is a lot more to it that I was able to grasp simply by watching conductors.

In mainstream romantic comedies, I'm usually tearing my hair out. It's just a devastatingly difficult genre for me.

I have always loved Scottish music - all sorts of Celtic, Gaelic music.

I would like to do a science fiction film some day. Star Wars seems really to have destroyed the genre, which at one time offered great musical opportunities.

New Yorkers may think they're on some cutting edge, but that's not especially true. It is, however, the most exciting heterogeneous mess of a town I've ever seen.

I think being a little nuts is helpful.

On Being John Malkovich and the cinema of the absurd, I do enjoy it. I wish there were more like it. The very fact that there can't be more like it is one of the reasons it's admirable.

Los Angeles is an industry town, and it has great facilities and personnel. The disadvantage is that everyone there seems to talk about the same subject matter.

I had piano lessons when I was a kid, like most people. And hated them, like most people. And quit, like most people.

Any film which views the darker side of life, which is death with a sense of humor, is very much to my taste.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

I don't generally find myself listening to the music of a film unless there's something awfully wrong with it.

Even if I went off to some other career, I hope I would still be doing Coen films.

All my music is very simple in that melody is usually clearly stated.

Most films I work on, the people making the film are constantly second-guessing the executives of the studio, the producer, and the audience. It is very hard to accomplish anything in that situation.

Death is always around the corner, but often our society gives it inordinate help.

I like business and personal life to be distinct.

I don't personally see my work as being dark. What interests me is a balance between light and dark.

Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.

When the systems we expect to help us actually hurt us, we have tragedy.

There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen.

The flow of Guiness into the studio was inspirational as well as nutritive.

If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.

I just love the sheer mess of New York.

A carefree quality is a whole aspect of life that I will never understand. I don't think I have ever been carefree and can't see the pleasure of it.

Hopefully each film can be given a musical voice of its own, which is not to say that the instrumentation is always unique, but that the relationship between the sound and the image is unique.

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.

Connection is what one is after in probably most media, but certainly in film, which is an immersive medium.