Elia Kazan Quotes

I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood. ~ Elia Kazan

There aren't many male stars - that's a loose term - like Kirk [Douglas] around. Most of those virile personalities have to keep working, continue the image because they can't do anything else. They don't even read. Their real identity is in making those pictures. They have to keep jumping on horses and hitting somebody on the head with a gun. ~ Elia Kazan

The essence of the stage is concentration and penetration. Of the screen action, movement, sweep. ~ Elia Kazan

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

The only guy who was at all helpful as a producer was Sam Spiegel with On the Waterfront. He's one of the few who even knows what he's doing. ~ Elia Kazan

I was the true future. I understood Communism better than they did. ~ Elia Kazan

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

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. ~ Elia Kazan

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. ~ Elia Kazan

Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed. ~ Elia Kazan

You have to remind people of their own struggles. It's a responsibility. ~ Elia Kazan

I am not a cosmic orphan. ~ Elia Kazan

I may be getting old, but not foolish. ~ Elia Kazan

Criticism- a big bite out of someone's back. ~ Elia Kazan

I was born in Turkey in an extremely oppressive climate at the time of pogroms, massacres, really. An immigrant appreciates the freedom more. ~ Elia Kazan

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

It's difficult, if not impossible, to get away with anything false before the camera. That instrument penetrates the husk of the actor; it reveals what's truly happening - if anything, if nothing. A close-up demands absolute truth. It's a severe and awesome truth ~ Elia Kazan

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. ~ Elia Kazan

One final thing a director needs: The ability to say 'I am wrong' or 'I was wrong.' Not as easy as it sounds. But in many situations, these 3 words, honestly spoken, will save the day. ~ Elia Kazan

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. ~ Elia Kazan

People made suggestions, but, hell, I don't actually listen to anybody, I just go my own way. ~ Elia Kazan

The more ambivalent you are and the more uncertain you are, then you can get something that you cannot anticipate. ~ Elia Kazan

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

You've got to keep fighting - you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive. ~ Elia Kazan

I hate the Communists and have for many years and don't feel right about giving up my career to defend them. I will give up my film career if it is in the interests of defending something I believe in, but not this. ~ Elia Kazan

A film director has to get a shot, no matter what he does. We're desperate people. ~ Elia Kazan

I got into a brawl one night in a saloon in Greenwich Village. Elia Kazan, a great director, saw me put out a couple of hecklers and figures there was some Big Daddy in me, just lyin' dormant. And out it came. People still do call me Big Daddy, but to me, inside, I'm no Big Daddy at all. ~ Burl Ives

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan. ~ Alex North

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

A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do. ~ Elia Kazan

I have a bit of an obsession with the 1950's and all those actors from Montgomery Clift to James Dean and Anthony Perkins. Just that whole era of Tennessee Williams to Elia Kazan. ~ Sebastian Stan

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

My heroes are guys like Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I've always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years. ~ Les Claypool

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. ~ Elia Kazan

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

Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him. ~ Elia Kazan

I didn't have the problem of finding myself at 45 on the wrong course - I always wanted to be a film director. ~ Elia Kazan

I left the theater; I literally left to begin a new life. ~ Elia Kazan

The thing with films is that you have to make something that will get people out of their houses, away from the TV set. You must touch people, say something. Otherwise, they'll stay at home. ~ Elia Kazan

The real challenge is not simply to survive. Hell, anyone can do that. It's to survive as yourself, undiminished. ~ Elia Kazan

Never underestimate the narcissism of a writer. ~ Elia Kazan

Acting ... was the biggest charge I ever had. What other artist has it so good? Approval so quick? ~ Elia Kazan

With kids you can take a chance but casting a guy at 45 is different. You don't discover somebody that age. If an actor hasn't made it by that time he probably has no talent. ~ Elia Kazan

I'm going to make a film where not one word is really important. I'm going to make it all action. ~ Elia Kazan

The belief that the good in American society will finally win out ... I don't believe any more. ~ Elia Kazan

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

Hey, you must be doin' good, 'cause I never hear from you. ~ Elia Kazan

I was not what you'd call a first-class actor, but I did all right. ~ Elia Kazan

I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt. ~ Elia Kazan

I was an outsider ... but I was also sympathetic with people that were struggling to get up, because I struggled to get up. ~ Elia Kazan

I was able to capture on film things the actors didn't even know they were doing. ~ Elia Kazan

The camera is more than a recorder, it's a microscope. It penetrates, it goes into people and you see their most private and concealed thoughts. ~ Elia Kazan

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

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

The motion pictures I have made and the plays I have chosen to direct represent my convictions. ~ Elia Kazan

Some directors, like Stevens [George Stevens], shoot full circle, 360 degrees, and that's what's right for them. I generally shoot at about a seven to one ratio. But part of that is because I've worked on every screenplay, so I'm further along in the visual concept. ~ Elia Kazan

Very often the Group actor is a critic when he's acting and an actor when he's criticizing. ~ Elia Kazan

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

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

I know many of the critics and I don't think of them as God-like figures. What can they do to hurt me? Sure, I might be slightly embarrassed for a day, but then you just go your own way. ~ Elia Kazan

I won't go back to the theater. I like some of the things they're doing but it's different now, not something I could do. I'll go on making films the rest of my life. ~ Elia Kazan

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

A face, he believes, is a piece of sculpture that has taken a lifetime to mold, so it tells more than any actor's technique possibly could. I've watched Fellini work, and he did ~ Elia Kazan

I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me. ~ Elia Kazan

Truth gets buried, that's why people write autobiographies. ~ Elia Kazan

I find playwriting really painful. I love it, or I wouldn't do it, but I don't love the theater as much as I love movies. ~ Zoe Kazan

Any writer can attest that in the luckiest, happiest state, the words are not coming from you, but through you. ~ Zoe Kazan

Too often in the theatre people can't wait for intermission to get some chocolate or something. But with Come Back, Little Sheba I just hope people leave feeling like they've spent a really good two-hours in that house with us. ~ Zoe Kazan

Oh, Zoe Kazan - I'd move back to Brooklyn for her. She makes me happy with my life. Knowing her, being at her dinner table, going on a walk with her is the best of all possible worlds. ~ Michelle Williams

To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka - a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentleman - a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual who was seated in it. "Look at that carriage," one of them said to the other. "Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?" "I think it will," replied his companion. "But not as far as Kazan, eh?" "No, not as far as Kazan." With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short, very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively; after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the inn door, its occupant ~ Nikolai Gogol

When you're in the editing room, as a director, you get the opportunity to look at your work. As a writer, you can rewrite. But as an actor, unless you're watching playback, you really rely on the director to help you. ~ Zoe Kazan

I'm always disappointed after an audition when I don't get a part and I hear, "Oh, she was too X, or too Y," and it's too much of a quality. ~ Zoe Kazan

I love bad movies, whereas going to the theater for me is a painful experience. I think it's really hard to sit and watch actors do something live and have it not go well. ~ Zoe Kazan

I'm used to very low-budget situations. In 'The Exploding Girl,' we were literally changing in Starbucks because we didn't have trailers. ~ Zoe Kazan

Well wtith a statue hermann cannot possibly fight ~ Eva Ibbotson

If I wanted to kill you..."She slowly lifted off him until she was completely free.Her entire body tensed,mourning the loss of him filling her,but..."I'd do this,"she murmured as she shimmied down his body,bringing her mouth over his hardness. ~ Katie Reus

Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse. ~ Zoe Kazan

You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow. ~ Zoe Kazan

Half the fun is getting to play dress-up and imagine what it's like to be this other person. If you're not excited about a part where you get to use your imagination, then what's the point in doing it? It'll be just another job. Also, Director Michael Pressman and I see eye-to-eye with Marie. ~ Zoe Kazan

If you pile up too many tomorrows, you'll end up with a lot of empty yesterdays. ~ Elia Gourgouris

The problem is that when you grow absolutely certain that all authorities are corrupt, then that would include the Palestinian authorities as well. ~ Elia Suleiman

I hate going to bed. I read scripts, clean, listen to the radio - I've fallen asleep to 'This American Life' more times than I can count! ~ Zoe Kazan

I don't think there should be a Palestinian state because I don't believe in states. ~ Elia Suleiman

When we do something we're not proud of, a lot of people don't want to look at that, people may say "what people don't know won't hurt them." ~ Zoe Kazan

Lenin arrived a stranger to Russia. Apart from a six-month stay in 1905-6, he had spent the previous seventeen years in exile abroad. Most of the workers who turned out to meet him at the Finland Station could never have seen him before.'I know very little of Russia,' Lenin once told Gorky. 'Simbirsk, Kazan, Petersburg, exile - that is all I know." During 1917 he would often claim that the mass of the ordinary people were even further to the Left than the Bolsheviks. Yet he had no experience of them, and knew only what his party agents told him (which was often what he wanted to hear). Between 5 July and the October seizure of power Lenin did not make a single public appearance. He barely set foot in the provinces. The man who was set to become the dictator of Russia had almost no direct knowledge of the way its people lived. Apart from two years as a lawyer, he had never even had a job. He was a "professional revolutionary', living apart from society and supporting himself from the party's funds and from the income of him mother's estate (which he continued to draw until her death in 1916). According to Gorky, it was this ignorance of everyday work, and the human suffering which it entailed, which had bred in Lenin a 'pitiless contempt, worthy of a nobleman, for the lives of the ordinary people...Life in all its complexity us unknown to Lenin. He does not know the ordinary people. He has never lived among them. ~ Orlando Figes

He went upstairs and opened the telegram; it was addressed to a department in the British Consulate, and the figures which followed had an ugly look like the lottery tickets that remained unsold on the last day of a draw. There was 2674 and then a string of five-figure numerals: 42811 79145 72312 59200 80947 62533 10605 and so on. It was his first telegram and he noticed that it was addressed from London. He was not even certain (so long ago his lesson seemed) that he could decode it, but he recognised a single group, 59200, which had an abrupt and monitory appearance as though Hawthorne that moment had come accusingly up the stairs. Gloomily he took down Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare' - how he had always detested Elia and the essay on Roast Pork. The first group of figures, he remembered, indicated the page, the line and the word with which the coding began. 'Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon,' he read, 'met with an end proportionable to her deserts'. He began to decode from 'deserts'. To his surprise something really did emerge. It was rather as though some strange inherited parrot had begun to speak. ~ Graham Greene

Falling in love is an act of magic, so is writing. ~ Zoe Kazan

If you go to another male,I will kill him.That human tonight is lucky he's alive."

~Jayce Kazan ~ Katie Reus

'A Face in the Crowd' is Elia Kazan's forgotten movie. ~ Peyton Reed

And when I get bored, it's like the worst parts of me come out. I really veer to self-destructive tendencies quickly. ~ Zoe Kazan

I never wanted to be a playwright. ~ Zoe Kazan

I've always really been interested in the Pygmalion myth and both what it has to say about creativity and what it has to say about relationships between men and women. ~ Zoe Kazan

I don't particularly have a good memory. I think history is many times just the text written by the victors. I wanted to counter that aspect. ~ Elia Suleiman

I love to act and that's sort of my first love. That's what I started out doing. ~ Zoe Kazan

Are you coming?" Matthew took his hand. "Not yet, but I hope we're headed that way." Silas rolled his eyes. "That's a terrible joke." "I know. You'll have to punish me for it. ~ Elia Winters

When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces. ~ Zoe Kazan

I forgive 'Face in the Crowd' its uneven tone because it's precisely what makes it feel unlike other Kazan movies. ~ Peyton Reed

It's fun for me to be with someone who loves reading as much as I do, because he'll give me things to read that I wouldn't normally seek out, and I think vice versa. ~ Zoe Kazan

My grandmother told me: "We all dated lots of different boys because no one was having sex or kissing. It was just going out for sodas and getting to know people. It didn't seem like there was a threat." I think now we have more ideas of people having premarital and unprotected sex. ~ Zoe Kazan

A lot of narrative films leave you no space for anything else but eating popcorn. I want to go in the complete opposite direction. I have to evacuate all psychology, to be less a protagonist and more a presence. ~ Elia Suleiman