Top 30 Carter Burwell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.”

— Carter Burwell

Featured in: Fun Quotes

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

— Carter Burwell

3. “I prefer a life in which we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

5. “I have always loved Scottish music – all sorts of Celtic, Gaelic music.”

— Carter Burwell

6. “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.”

— Carter Burwell

7. “I think being a little nuts is helpful.”

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

9. “I write music to please myself. Hopefully the director’s enjoying it too.”

— Carter Burwell

10. “I like the fact that New York looks a bit backwards, toward the Old World, rather than resolutely forwards.”

— Carter Burwell

11. “John Barry was my hero when I was about 13. His scores to the James Bond movies were the scores of my life back then.”

— Carter Burwell

12. “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.”

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

15. “The jarring change going from an urban environment to an extremely remote natural environment is extremely inspiring. It’s constantly stimulating, it’s like a slap in the face.”

— Carter Burwell

16. “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.”

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

19. “If someone suddenly lost their director the day before shooting and wanted me to step in, I’d be willing to. But I’d do brain surgery the same way. I’m always up for something new.”

— Carter Burwell

20. “How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.”

— Carter Burwell

21. “I almost never try to make the audience comfortable. I wouldn’t want that if I were in the audience.”

— Carter Burwell

22. “John Barry was the first film composer I was aware of. As a teenager I owned several of his Bond soundtracks.”

— Carter Burwell

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

23. “I just love the sheer mess of New York.”

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

27. “Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.”

— Carter Burwell

28. “I like business and personal life to be distinct.”

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

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

— Carter Burwell

32. “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.”

— Carter Burwell