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 BurnsWhen you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things.
Ken BurnsI don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives.
Ken BurnsWynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say.
Ken BurnsWhen 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.
Ken BurnsThe reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war, some lessons were learned. There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again." Human nature always superimposes itself - its strength and its frailty over the rush of chaos of ongoing events - and we can perceive patterns and themes and motifs.
Ken Burns