Quotes by Elia Kazan

• I've lost many of my best friends... I'm going to satisfy myself now, not the critics, not even my friends.
• The more ambivalent you are and the more uncertain you are, then you can get something that you cannot anticipate.
• I was the true future. I understood Communism better than they did.
• I was very intense. I think it's a privilege to be an actor.
• I will say nothing to an actor that cannot be translated into action.
• I would rather do what I did than crawl in front of a ritualistic Left and lie the way those other comrades did betray my own soul.
• I wouldn't go up on a stage now if you paid a thousand dollars for one minute of acting. It's a nasty experience. You're up there all by yourself. You're so damn exposed.
• I was taken in by what might be called the Hard Times version of the Communists' advertising or recruiting technique.
• I'm small, but I'm neither compliant nor agreeable.
• I was not what you'd call a first-class actor, but I did all right.
• Miller didn't write Death of a Salesman. He released it. It was there inside him, waiting to be turned loose. That's the measure of its merit.
• Our relationship was cursed by the fact that we agreed on everything.
• The belief that the good in American society will finally win out... I don't believe any more.
• The essence of the stage is concentration and penetration. Of the screen action, movement, sweep.
• The first thing you should do with an actor is not sign a contract with him. Take him to dinner. And take him for a walk afterwards.
• The makers of entertainment must try, in our field, to be honest and grown-up.
• I'm going to make a film where not one word is really important. I'm going to make it all action.
• I value peace when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies.
• I may be getting old, but not foolish.
• I owe Bankhead a gift; she made a director out of me.
• I question the value of stars. I think they're overrated. They get too much money, too much praise.
• I said to Tennessee, this thing is becoming the Marlon Brando show.
• I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt.
• I think there should be collaboration, but under my thumb.
• I was the hero of the young insurgent working class art movement.
• I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me.
• The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.
• I want to thank the Academy for its courage and generosity.
• I was always a self-conscious person.
• I was an outsider... but I was also sympathetic with people that were struggling to get up, because I struggled to get up.
• I was both very successful and very left; the living demonstration of how you could be on the left and still be in the gossip columns and be envied for the money you made.
• I was even superior to the Communists and when they didn't go along with me, I quit them.
• I was not a collective person or a bohemian; I was an elitist.
• I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.
• Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.
• The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.
• You have to remind people of their own struggles. It's a responsibility.
• You have no idea how fragile an actor's self-worth is.
• You can't just sit there and do the lines. You have to do something revealing or unusual.
• When you know what an actor has, you can reach in and arouse it. If you don't know what he has, you don't know what the hell is going on.
• What's called a difficult decision is a difficult decision because either way you go there are penalties.
• Very often the Group actor is a critic when he's acting and an actor when he's criticizing.
• To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.
• There is only one thing I respect in so-called Broadway actors... and that is their competitive sense.
• The world was like a huge red carpet out ahead of me to be walked on. And it stretched on and on, no end.
• The thing about Brando was that I'd make these directions, and he'd walk away. He'd heard enough... to get the machine going.
• The physical life of the scene is determined by whether the set squeezes people together or whether the set has an escape place in it.
• The motion pictures I have made and the plays I have chosen to direct represent my convictions.
• There was no doubt that there was a vast organization which was making fools of all the liberals in Hollywood and taking their money, that there was a police state among the Left element in Hollywood and Broadway.
• For years after I resigned, I was still faithful to their way of thinking. But not in the American Communists.
• I like directors who come on the set and create something that's a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.
• I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.
• I joined the Communist Party late in 1934. I got out a year and a half later.
• I have no spy stories to tell, because I saw no spies. Nor did I understand, at that time, any opposition between American and Russian national interest.
• I gave my life to the Group Theatre, because in it I'm building something for myself. What I build, I am.
• Hey, you must be doin' good, 'cause I never hear from you.
• Every picture that is successful has one little miracle in it.
• Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him.
• Anybody who informs on other people is doing something disturbing and even disgusting.
• Acting... was the biggest charge I ever had. What other artist has it so good? Approval so quick?
• A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do.
• A film director has to get a shot, no matter what he does. We're desperate people.
• You've got to keep fighting - you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive.
• I didn't have that much confidence. Maybe it looks that way. I'm glad it does.
• I don't remember anything anybody said in any Jack Ford picture. Nothing happens except action.