Top Ken Burns Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Ken Burns Biography

Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs in documentary films. His widely known documentary series include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), and The Vietnam War (2017). He was also executive producer of both The West (1996, directed by Stephen Ives), and Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (2015, directed by Barak Goodman).

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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 an active disengagement.

Fear, Lead, Make, Safety, Thinking, Worse

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.

Equipment, Figures, Player, Technique, Think, Thinking

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

Control, Creative, Enjoy, Nobody, Violent

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

History, Subscribe, View, Views, Who We Are, William

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

Thinking, Rocks, Play, Problem, Same

When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.

Documentary, Mean, Shooting, Style, Working

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.

Drama, Live, Music, People, Photography, Work

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

Center, Jazz, Jazz Music, Music, Nature, Person

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.

Apology, Bad, Done, Entirely, Film, Want

Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality.

Achieving, Children, Letters, Surer, Writing

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

Photographs, Research, Scripts, Use, Way

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.

Editing, Film, Organic, Records, Relationship, Shapes

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

1975, Justice, Stories, Years

I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes) that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious and malleable thing.

Add, Events, Known, Realization, Thing

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

Happened, Hard Times, Having, Jazz, Understanding

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

Defining, Good, Historical, Impression, Past, Survival

I wake the dead. I bring Jackie Robinson and the Roosevelts to life. Who do you think Im trying to wake up?

Dead, Life, Roosevelts, Thinking, Trying, Wake Up

History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.

Defining, History, Past, Settling, Who We Are

World War II is smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. What's interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you're given kind of a clean access to it in one way. It's also a war that represents a failure for the United States. Many people came back feeling like they never wanted to talk about it again. And so we developed a national amnesia.

Came, Given, Interesting, Nostalgia, People, War

There is no communication in this world except between equals.

Communication, Equals, Except, This World, World

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