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

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

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.

I may be getting old, but not foolish.

I'm going to make a film where not one word is really important. I'm going to make it all action.

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.

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.

Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I've lost many of my best friends... I'm going to satisfy myself now, not the critics, not even my friends.

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

I was always a self-conscious person.

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

I question the value of stars. I think they're overrated. They get too much money, too much praise.

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

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

I was an outsider... but I was also sympathetic with people that were struggling to get up, because I struggled to get up.

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

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

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

The world was like a huge red carpet out ahead of me to be walked on. And it stretched on and on, no end.

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.

I was even superior to the Communists and when they didn't go along with me, I quit them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Very often the Group actor is a critic when he's acting and an actor when he's criticizing.

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.

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.

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

A film director has to get a shot, no matter what he does. We're desperate people.

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

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

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

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.

Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.