Kazan Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse. — Zoe Kazan

I love to act and that's sort of my first love. That's what I started out doing. — Zoe Kazan

I always wrote. My parents are writers. It just seemed like something people did. — Zoe Kazan

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

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

I have a bit of an obsession with the 1950's and all those actors from Montgomery Clift to James Dean and Anthony Perkins. Just that whole era of Tennessee Williams to Elia Kazan. — Sebastian Stan

'A Face in the Crowd' is Elia Kazan's forgotten movie. — Peyton Reed

I hate going to bed. I read scripts, clean, listen to the radio - I've fallen asleep to 'This American Life' more times than I can count! — Zoe Kazan

I was the hero of the young insurgent working class art movement. — Elia Kazan

If I wanted to kill you..."She slowly lifted off him until she was completely free.Her entire body tensed,mourning the loss of him filling her,but..."I'd do this,"she murmured as she shimmied down his body,bringing her mouth over his hardness. — Katie Reus

You've got to keep fighting - you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive. — Elia Kazan

I'm small, but I'm neither compliant nor agreeable. — Elia Kazan

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

Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed. — Elia Kazan

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

I was the true future. I understood Communism better than they did. — Elia Kazan

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

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

I think the written word is my first love. I was just a very imagination - centered child and a big part of that imaginary life came from reading. — Zoe Kazan

I was very intense. I think it's a privilege to be an actor. — Elia Kazan

You have to remind people of their own struggles. It's a responsibility. — Elia Kazan

And when I get bored, it's like the worst parts of me come out. I really veer to self-destructive tendencies quickly. — Zoe Kazan

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

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

I really love people. I love to meet people. I'm curious about people. — Zoe Kazan

When you're in the editing room, as a director, you get the opportunity to look at your work. As a writer, you can rewrite. But as an actor, unless you're watching playback, you really rely on the director to help you. — Zoe Kazan

I think most actors jump at the chance to do something where the camera's on them all the time. — Zoe Kazan

If I'm not working, I don't feel complete. — Zoe Kazan

My grandmother told me: "We all dated lots of different boys because no one was having sex or kissing. It was just going out for sodas and getting to know people. It didn't seem like there was a threat." I think now we have more ideas of people having premarital and unprotected sex. — Zoe Kazan

I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem. — Zoe Kazan

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

I love to walk around New York. Honestly, that's like the best thing, to walk over to Park Slope and go visit my friend Betty and take her dog out in the park or go walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I really dig being outside and getting to see everybody in the street. — Zoe Kazan

I don't like pretentious films or pretentious people. — Zoe Kazan

I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt. — Elia Kazan

Acting ... was the biggest charge I ever had. What other artist has it so good? Approval so quick? — Elia Kazan

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

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

My schedule is completely different doing a play than it is doing a movie, and I actually think it's a much harder schedule because you've got to do it eight times a week and you've got to do it good eight times a week and with different kinds of audiences who are cold or drunk or tired, whatever it is. — Zoe Kazan

So often you're asked to play impossibly perfect version of yourself on screen that it's nice to get to bring in those parts that you think aren't as worth looking at. — Zoe Kazan

Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it. — Elia Kazan

I forgive 'Face in the Crowd' its uneven tone because it's precisely what makes it feel unlike other Kazan movies. — Peyton Reed

Never underestimate a good sleep. — Zoe Kazan

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

I think, a lot of times, directors assume that whatever they get from you the first time, whether it be at an audition or on set, is all that you can bring. — Zoe Kazan

There aren't a lot of movies being made about women, period. Most of the time, the roles that are available are the sidekick, the friend, the girlfriend or the wife, and they just aren't that interesting. — Zoe Kazan

Elia Kazan understood my problems. He was able to bring out the very best in me. He gave me credit for my intelligence. — Ethel Waters

I love singing. It's who I am. When I act, I take a small part of myself and just magnify it, but when I'm singing, that's who I am. I don't write music, so I choose songs that I would have written. — Lainie Kazan

This was a cruelty made by history. Long after serfdom had been abolished the land captains exercised their right to flog the peasants for petty crimes. Liberals rightly warned about the psychological effects of this brutality. One physician, addressing the Kazan Medical Society in 1895 said that it 'not only debases but even hardens and brutalizes human nature'. Chekhov, who was also a practising physician, denounced corporal punishment, adding that 'it coarsens and brutalizes not only the offenders but also those who execute the punishments and those who are present at it'. — Orlando Figes

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

Recovery proceeding excellently. Am sure that the crushing of the Kazan Czechs and whiteguards, as well as of the kulak extortioners supporting them, will be exemplarily ruthless. — Vladimir Lenin

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

I'd seen all the great entertainers by the time I was 14 or 15. My mother was artistic. My father was a bookmaker, so he had access to all those nightclubs, and he was smitten by certain artists, and we would go see them. We'd see comics like Sid Caesar and Milton Berle - those kind of artists - many of whom I worked with later in my life. — Lainie Kazan

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

I didn't have that much confidence. Maybe it looks that way. I'm glad it does. — 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

I am not a cosmic orphan. — Elia Kazan

You have no idea how fragile an actor's self-worth is. — Elia Kazan

The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed. — Elia Kazan

I was able to capture on film things the actors didn't even know they were doing. — Elia Kazan

It is, as calls to arms go, straightforward. Crystal clear. And if you aren't looking forward to Spurs and Kazan, to Southampton and Bournemouth, if that just doesn't get you going, wanting to be emotional, unashamedly emotional, optimistic, passionate in a way that outsiders love to mock and our own meek minded souls call 'embarrassing' then you know what? There's the door. There is the door, and you can walk through it, and both you and us will be happier for that. Because, for ninety minutes every few days, this fella represents Liverpool, eleven lads wearing Red represent Liverpool and we represent Liverpool. Wherever we are on globe, with an even greater responsibility if we are in the stadium. — Neil Atkinson

Well wtith a statue hermann cannot possibly fight — Eva Ibbotson

And I think the female creative urge is intrinsically biologically linked to our ability to give birth to a child, even if we've never ... I've never given birth, but I feel like it's part of our psychology. — Zoe Kazan

I don't have a lot of patience for boring arthouse movies. — Zoe 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 think film writing, you're thinking in pictures, and stage writing, you're thinking in dialogue. In film writing, it's also, you only get so many words, so everything has to earn its place in a really economical way. I think for stage writing, you have more leeway. — Zoe Kazan

Truth gets buried, that's why people write autobiographies. — Elia Kazan

The belief that the good in American society will finally win out ... I don't believe any more. — Elia Kazan

I'm used to very low-budget situations. In 'The Exploding Girl,' we were literally changing in Starbucks because we didn't have trailers. — Zoe Kazan

I went to a lot of theatre. My parents were very involved with the performing arts. I went to nightclub shows when I was a little girl. We went to Florida and we would go to the Cocoanut Grove down there. We'd go see Lena Horne, Jimmy Durante, Sophie Tucker and Judy Garland. — Lainie Kazan

I have mad luck. I'm super-good at games like backgammon or anything that requires rolling dice. — Zoe Kazan

I'm an exercise and yoga junkie and I feel good. — Lainie Kazan

Part of the challenge of being a girl living in the 21st Century, looking back, the danger is to not judge your character by your own standards. — Zoe Kazan

I may be getting old, but not foolish. — Elia Kazan

People made suggestions, but, hell, I don't actually listen to anybody, I just go my own way. — Elia Kazan

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

I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me. — Elia Kazan

Nothing's going to come to you by sitting around and waiting for it. — Zoe Kazan

Never underestimate the narcissism of a writer. — Elia Kazan

I left the theater; I literally left to begin a new life. — Elia Kazan

When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces. — Zoe Kazan

The movie I've watched a million times is 'A Face in the Crowd,' directed by Elia Kazan, starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal. I first saw this movie, I guess I was in my early 20s. I'd never heard of it, and somebody told me about it, and I watched it and was just completely jaw-droppingly shocked at how current it was. — Callie Khouri

I joined the Communist Party late in 1934. I got out a year and a half later. — Elia Kazan

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

Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world. — Zoe Kazan

I read a lot of plays as a kid, but I didn't see that many plays, so I feel better-versed in film history and film structure. I just think it's easier to think in pictures. — Zoe Kazan

There is only one thing I respect in so-called Broadway actors ... and that is their competitive sense. — Elia Kazan

If you go to another male,I will kill him.That human tonight is lucky he's alive."

~Jayce Kazan — Katie Reus

I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice. — Elia Kazan

Well, I have a sister that I'm very close with, and that relationship is probably the most intense relationship of my life to date, probably of my life, period. — Zoe Kazan

Criticism- a big bite out of someone's back. — Elia Kazan

I was always a self-conscious person. — Elia Kazan

I've always really been interested in the Pygmalion myth and both what it has to say about creativity and what it has to say about relationships between men and women. — Zoe Kazan

For years after I resigned, I was still faithful to their way of thinking. But not in the American Communists. — Elia Kazan

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

Kazan was an old friend, I met him in 1938. He picked up radio jobs for eating money, so I met him on a couple of radio shows. Later on I was in a play he directed. — Richard Widmark

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

Someone said that once a family producers a writer, that's the end of the family. — Zoe Kazan

I've definitely gotten to work with female directors, and I feel lucky because of that. I just feel like more voices should be represented. — Zoe Kazan