Elia Kazan Quotes

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Elia Kazan

Profession : Director

Birth : September 7, 1909

I want to thank the Academy for its courage and generosity.

Elia Kazan

I was taken in by what might be called the Hard Times version of the Communists' advertising or recruiting technique.

Elia Kazan

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

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 picture that is successful has one little miracle in it.

Elia Kazan

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

Elia Kazan

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

Elia Kazan

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

Elia Kazan

Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him.

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

What's called a difficult decision is a difficult decision because either way you go there are penalties.

Elia Kazan

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.

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

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.

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

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

Elia Kazan

I'm small, but I'm neither compliant nor agreeable.

Elia Kazan

Anybody who informs on other people is doing something disturbing and even disgusting.

Elia Kazan

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

Elia Kazan

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

Elia Kazan