96 Quotes by Ken Burns

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.

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.

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?

You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.

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

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

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

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.