Quotes By Elia Kazan

You have no idea how fragile an actor's self-worth is.

I was the hero of the young insurgent working class art movement.

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.

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.

Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.

You can't just sit there and do the lines. You have to do something revealing or unusual.

I will say nothing to an actor that cannot be translated into action.

There is only one thing I respect in so-called Broadway actors... and that is their competitive sense.

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 don't remember anything anybody said in any Jack Ford picture. Nothing happens except action.

I joined the Communist Party late in 1934. I got out a year and a half later.

The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.

I was not a collective person or a bohemian; I was an elitist.

The world was like a huge red carpet out ahead of me to be walked on. And it stretched on and on, no end.

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.

Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him.

I said to Tennessee, this thing is becoming the Marlon Brando show.

Every picture that is successful has one little miracle in it.

Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.

I owe Bankhead a gift; she made a director out of me.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

Our relationship was cursed by the fact that we agreed on everything.

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.

I like directors who come on the set and create something that's a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.

The makers of entertainment must try, in our field, to be honest and grown-up.

I was even superior to the Communists and when they didn't go along with me, I quit them.

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 question the value of stars. I think they're overrated. They get too much money, too much praise.

For years after I resigned, I was still faithful to their way of thinking. But not in the American Communists.

I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.