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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
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The belief that the good in American society will finally win out... I don't believe any more.
Elia Kazan
The makers of entertainment must try, in our field, to be honest and grown-up.
Elia Kazan
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
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
You can't just sit there and do the lines. You have to do something revealing or unusual.
Elia Kazan
I said to Tennessee, this thing is becoming the Marlon Brando show.
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
The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.
Elia Kazan
I'm small, but I'm neither compliant nor agreeable.
Elia Kazan
I may be getting old, but not foolish.
Elia Kazan
I gave my life to the Group Theatre, because in it I'm building something for myself. What I build, I am.
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
Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.
Elia Kazan
I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me.
Elia Kazan
There is only one thing I respect in so-called Broadway actors... and that is their competitive sense.
Elia Kazan
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
You have to remind people of their own struggles. It's a responsibility.
Elia Kazan
Acting... was the biggest charge I ever had. What other artist has it so good? Approval so quick?
Elia Kazan
I was not a collective person or a bohemian; I was an elitist.
Elia Kazan
The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.
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
I think there should be collaboration, but under my thumb.
Elia Kazan
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
I was even superior to the Communists and when they didn't go along with me, I quit them.
Elia Kazan
I will say nothing to an actor that cannot be translated into action.
Elia Kazan
I joined the Communist Party late in 1934. I got out a year and a half later.
Elia Kazan
Every picture that is successful has one little miracle in it.
Elia Kazan
I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.
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
Hey, you must be doin' good, 'cause I never hear from you.
Elia Kazan
I was always a self-conscious person.
Elia Kazan
I value peace when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies.
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 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
I'm going to make a film where not one word is really important. I'm going to make it all action.
Elia Kazan
I was the hero of the young insurgent working class art movement.
Elia Kazan
You have no idea how fragile an actor's self-worth is.
Elia Kazan
Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him.
Elia Kazan
You've got to keep fighting - you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive.
Elia Kazan
I was taken in by what might be called the Hard Times version of the Communists' advertising or recruiting technique.
Elia Kazan
I want to thank the Academy for its courage and generosity.
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
I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.
Elia Kazan
The essence of the stage is concentration and penetration. Of the screen action, movement, sweep.
Elia Kazan
Our relationship was cursed by the fact that we agreed on everything.
Elia Kazan
Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.
Elia Kazan
I don't remember anything anybody said in any Jack Ford picture. Nothing happens except action.
Elia Kazan
A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do.
Elia Kazan