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

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More quotes from: Ken Burns

• "A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm. "
• "After The Civil War series, there were only a handful of bookstores in America that ..."
• "But like scenes in The Civil War and like scenes in Baseball, I finally had ..."
• "By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of jazz. "
• "Erroll Garner is immensely popular and terrific, but I don't see him as much of ..."
• "Even in areas of music that I wasn't initially too attracted to, I would find ..."
• "Flood was really a pioneer, and he is a sacrificial lamb, and I think somewhere ..."
• "General Schwartzcoff once told me that he ordered his senior command to see The Civil ..."
• "Harmon Killebrew was one of people who I didn't include in the Baseball documentary. Not ..."
• "I am dealing with history. "
• "I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to ..."
• "I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment ..."
• "I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with ..."
• "I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the ..."
• "I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, ..."
• "I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, ..."
• "I had to take what is normally background, soundtrack, and make it foreground and make ..."
• "I have an 18-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old daughter. "
• "I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see ..."
• "I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first ..."
• "I like pretty much everything Miles did and has done. I like everything that Miles ..."
• "I love Mingus. He is terrific and we have in our 10th episode, I think ..."
• "I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's ..."

• "I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New ..."
• "I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start ..."
• "I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were ..."
• "I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You ..."
• "I think that if people are so terrified of Wynton as to prejudge my film ..."
• "I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that it's extremely ..."
• "I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what ..."
• "I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find ..."
• "I watched all the films of Robert Flaherty. I looked at the great British documentary ..."
• "I've got a five-CD box, which is a really hell of a good reflection of ..."
• "If you think about it, bebop is avant-garde to those people playing swing. Let us ..."
• "In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more ..."
• "It was great to have Wynton's involvement. He is passionate. He loves this music. He ..."
• "Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America. "
• "Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of ..."
• "Martin Scorsese really brings it home to me in films like Taxi Driver and Mean ..."
• "One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always ..."
• "Some of my most favorite sequences are on Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Miles Davis. "
• "That's one of those situations where when you are not the first, you get forgotten. ..."
• "The flame is not out, but it is flickering. "
• "The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution ..."
• "The only time in our history, besides the swing era, when jazz was a number ..."

• "The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could ..."
• "The thing that people forget is that the whole academic community was upset because Shelby ..."
• "The way I work, the interview never becomes larger than the person being interviewed. "
• "To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious ..."
• "We are constantly struggling to whittle down and refine these films so the audience sees ..."
• "We focused our attention on the heroism and courage of Jackie Robinson, and that's what ..."
• "We saw the Civil War as a paradox of love and loss. If we assume ..."
• "We want Sarah Vaughan to sell more records. We want Sonny Rollins to sell more ..."
• "We were rebuffed a few times and I then realized as I have throughout my ..."
• "We work years and years to craft complicated narratives, and we're often more painfully aware ..."
• "We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz? "
• "When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has ..."
• "When I was a boy I was absolutely convinced I was going to be the ..."
• "When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have ..."
• "Wynton is not there in my film to promote his own ideology, whatever that may ..."
• "Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted ..."
• "You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you ..."
• "You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of ..."
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• "You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you ..."