Ken Burns Quotes

I think we all lose in the end because we don't get to stay here forever.

All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever.

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me.

I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

If you haven't understood that if you are born you die, you scarcely deserve to be able to be alive.

We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.

I always know I can die at any moment.

We're all terminal; none of us are getting out of this alive.

You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

I like things that are just about to go. Everything's leaving. Death is never far away from me. When you make something, death can't help but be in it.

The fact that we die is one of the more interesting things that happen to us. Fiction ought to be about bottom lines, and that's as bottom-line as you can get.

For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It's impossible to do.

Between my head and my hand, there is always the face of death.

Mortality defines the human condition.

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.

How can we live and die and never know the difference?

I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.

Oh my God, if I know anything, I know I'm gonna die! I never forget that. I know I'll be forgotten in a minute, and that's just fine with me.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.