Ken Burns Quotes

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.
Ken Burns

Life, Fear, Often

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.
Ken Burns

History, Challenge, Light

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of jazz.
Ken Burns

Nature, Person, Jazz

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.
Ken Burns

Good, History, Past

A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.
Ken Burns

Jazz, Beat, Changing

History's just been made for sale to an inside deal.
Ken Burns

History, Made, Deal

I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.
Ken Burns

War, Country, America

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.
Ken Burns

Truth, Movies, Past

I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally.
Ken Burns

Understand, Why, Become

I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts.
Ken Burns

Music, Research, Facts

I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever.
Ken Burns

Control, Enjoy, Creative

I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head.
Ken Burns

Until, While, Film

I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities.
Ken Burns

Future, Democracy, Through

I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge.
Ken Burns

Children, Made, Making

I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.
Ken Burns

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.
Ken Burns

Single, Put, Wanted

I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.
Ken Burns

Music, Before, Start

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.
Ken Burns

History, Before, View

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.
Ken Burns

Work, Film, Six

I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that it's extremely predictable, it's a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and they play it over and over again and there's a certain musical virtuosity involved in it.
Ken Burns

Music, Rock, Play

I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.
Ken Burns

Music, Work, Great

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?
Ken Burns

Made, Same, Sense

In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel.
Ken Burns

Music, End, After

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.
Ken Burns

America, Jazz, Century

Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of the day, you know you have a pearl.
Ken Burns

End, Moment, Pearl

Share with your Friends

Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.

Biography

Nationality: American

Born: July 29, 1953

Links

Find on Amazon: Ken Burns

Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics

Friendship Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

Related Authors

Woody Allen
Quentin Tarantino
Steven Spielberg
Stanley Kubrick
Billy Wilder
Tim Burton
David Lynch
Francis Ford Coppola
More

Get Social with BrainyQuote

BrainyQuote Desktop

BrainyQuote Mobile

Site

Quote of the Day

Social

BQ on Pinterest

Syndication

Funny Quote Feed

Love Quote Feed

Nature Quote Feed

About Us