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"When 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."
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Exlpore more People quotes
"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
"This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance."
"Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad."
"People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom."
Explore more quotes by Ken Burns
"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."
"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."
"One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes."
"The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time."
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