I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities. – Ken Burns
People tend to forget that the word “history” contains the word “story”. – Ken Burns
I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films. – Ken Burns
I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what were lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and its worse than fear – its active disengagement. – Ken Burns
There is no “underground” community, no dark den of drunken sailors initiating themselves into manhood via cheap, ill-conceived exercises in bodily perforation; it’s just a group of people who delight in using their bodies as billboards. – Joanne McCubrey, “Walking Art: Tattoos,” Mountain Democrat Weekend magazine, 199