Quotes from Elia Kazan

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

I was always a self-conscious person.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

I value peace, too, when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies.

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.

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

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

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

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

I am not a cosmic orphan.

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

Some things exist only because they're talked about.

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.

History is written by the last fellow at the typewriter.

I've known only one person who's not on some moral plane high above me — although she sure looks like an angel when we fuck.

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.

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

I've lost many of my best friends... I'm going to satisfy myself now, not the critics, not even my friends.

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