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"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."
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"So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn't even budge."
"Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied."
"Sometimes I think I'm real predictable to myself and other times... you always wonder, Is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a mistake? Should I be doing something else?"
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones."
"I can't write about my greatest mistakes because I've slept with most of them."
"I've not seen in my lifetime any politician who is a heroic figure. The manipulation that all politicians use on one level or another is so transparent."
"I've had every advantage in the world, despite the 18 years of silence which were nobody's fault but mine."
Explore more quotes by Ken Burns
"Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being."
"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."
"You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time."
"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."
"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."
"I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War."
"The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts."
"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 enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever."
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