Elia Kazan

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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