Top 80 Elia Kazan Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Elia Kazan

2. “People made suggestions, but, hell, I don’t actually listen to anybody, I just go my own way.”

— Elia Kazan

3. “You’ve got to keep fighting; you’ve got to risk your life every six months to stay alive.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

5. “I am not a cosmic orphan.”

— Elia Kazan

6. “I left the theater; I literally left to begin a new life.”

— Elia Kazan

7. “Look for the contradictions in every character, especially in your heroes and villains. No one should be what they first seem to be. Surprise the audience.”

— Elia Kazan

8. “Criticism- a big bite out of someone’s back.”

— Elia Kazan

9. “Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him.”

— Elia Kazan

10. “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

11. “A film director has to get a shot, no matter what he does. We’re desperate people.”

— Elia Kazan

12. “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

13. “I may be getting old, but not foolish.”

— Elia Kazan

14. “I was always a self-conscious person.”

— Elia Kazan

15. “What’s called a difficult decision is a difficult decision because either way you go there are penalties.”

— Elia Kazan

16. “I’ve come to believe that everything worth achieving is beyond one’s capacity – or seems so at first. The thing is to persist, not back off, fight your fight, pay your dues, and carry on. Effort is all; continue and you may get there despite everything.”

— Elia Kazan

17. “If you’re going to play a cowboy, show up with the horse at the audition.”

— Elia Kazan

18. “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

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

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

22. “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

23. “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

24. “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

25. “Wonder is our need today, not information.”

— Elia Kazan

26. “Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.”

— Elia Kazan

27. “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

28. “The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don’t dare reveal.”

— Elia Kazan

29. “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

30. “I gave my life to the Group Theatre, because in it I’m building something for myself. What I build, I am.”

— Elia Kazan

31. “You have to remind people of their own struggles. It’s a responsibility.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

33. “I value peace when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

36. “I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt.”

— Elia Kazan

37. “Truth gets buried, that’s why people write autobiographies.”

— Elia Kazan

38. “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.”

— Elia Kazan

39. “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

40. “Never underestimate the narcissism of a writer.”

— Elia Kazan

41. “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

42. “I question the value of stars. I think they’re overrated. They get too much money, too much praise.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

45. “You have no idea how fragile an actor’s self-worth is.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

47. “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

48. “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

49. “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.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan