Ken Burns Quotes

The only reason I became a writer was so I could exist on a piece of paper.

Without a function, we cease to be. So, I will write till I die.

A book is the only immortality.

The cool thing about writing music, writing anything, is that once you publish it, it's there forever.

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth the reading, or do things worth the writing.

It's not lost on me that everyone dies, but some people have a kind of immortality about them, and you can't imagine that they will ever be gone.

How many other people get a chance to be remembered forever? And that's what I really want. I want to be remembered forever.

We build our legacy piece by piece, and maybe the whole world will remember you or maybe just a couple of people, but you do what you can to make sure you're still around after you're gone.

When I got 'forever' tattooed on my throat, it meant that my legacy was going to live forever. So anything that I create, I do it because I believe it will live on, forever.

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

Eternity forbids thee to forget.

I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.

Leave a mark they can't erase, neither space nor time.

A letter is the most imperishable thing on earth.

My grandfather was dying, and told the family he had decided to die. ... At that moment I wanted so badly to write and tell him that he was never going to die, that somehow he would always be present in my life, because he had a theory that death didn't exist, only forgetfulness did. He believed that if you can keep people in your memory, they will live forever. That's what he did with my grandmother.

Will you be remembered, how would you be remembered, why wouldn’t you fight for the greatest achievement ever?

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

We exist as long as somebody remembers us.

I personally would consider it to be an honour to be fossilized.

Seeking to perpetuate one's name on earth is like writing on the sand by the seashore; to be perpetual it must be written on eternal shores.

The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.

letters are so much easier than living. One can give one's best.

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Song forbids victorious deeds to die.

Write to register history, and name each thing. Write what should not be forgotten.