Top 80 Elia Kazan Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you’ve been blessed.”

— Elia Kazan

52. “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

53. “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

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

— Elia Kazan

55. “I don’t remember anything anybody said in any Jack Ford picture. Nothing happens except action.”

— Elia Kazan

56. “I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me.”

— Elia Kazan

57. “I was able to capture on film things the actors didn’t even know they were doing.”

— Elia Kazan

58. “I’m going to make a film where not one word is really important. I’m going to make it all action.”

— Elia Kazan

59. “I think there should be collaboration, but under my thumb.”

— Elia Kazan

60. “I wouldn’t go up on a stage now if you paid a thousand dollars for one minute of acting. It’s a nasty experience. You’re up there all by yourself. You’re so damn exposed.”

— Elia Kazan

61. “Very often the Group actor is a critic when he’s acting and an actor when he’s criticizing.”

— Elia Kazan

62. “I’m small, but I’m neither compliant nor agreeable.”

— Elia Kazan

63. “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

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

— Elia Kazan

65. “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

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

— Elia Kazan

67. “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.”

— Elia Kazan

68. “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

69. “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

70. “TV has made us get down to the nub and new films will begin to live up to what the medium can be.”

— Elia Kazan

71. “I was very intense. I think it’s a privilege to be an actor.”

— Elia Kazan

72. “A good director’s not sure when he gets on the set what he’s going to do.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

74. “I was not what you’d call a first-class actor, but I did all right.”

— Elia Kazan

75. “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

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

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

79. “I’m very pro-America, but I feel it necessary to keep in touch with Europe to maintain a perspective.”

— Elia Kazan

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

— Elia Kazan

81. “I was the true future. I understood Communism better than they did.”

— Elia Kazan

82. “Some things exist only because they’re talked about.”

— Elia Kazan