The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience o….

The flame is not out, but it is flickering..

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time..

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..

There is no communication in this world except between equals..

I'm a filmmaker. I'm an artist. I've chosen to work in history the way someone might choose to work in still lifes or landscapes..

I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever..

We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these san….

I don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives..

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice..

Wynton 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….

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse….

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now..

You know, you meet some people, and do a lot of interviews, and you come across a Buck O'Neill and you know you are going to know him for the rest of….

I think we continually need to understand how important an event the war was - how defining, how central to who we are. Everything that came before ….

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 pea….

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past.

There are no ordinary lives..

Do something that will last and be beautiful. It doesn't have to be a bridge-or a symphony or book or a business. It could be the look in the eye of ….

I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that its extremely predictable, its a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and the….

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, "God in us.".