Elia Kazan Quotes

Nothing is more uninteresting than completely knowing somebody, being totally at ease.

The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally - not a 20 percent traitor.

It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you've heard everything before and that you have nothing left to learn.

Routine feeds the illusion of safety.

Friendship is the only point in human affairs concerning the benefit of which all, with one voice, agree.

I'll take the deal, whatever you want to do.

It is through our extended family that we first learn to compromise and come to an understanding that even if we don't always agree about things we can still love and look out for each other.

Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit.

Emphasize reconciliation, not resolution. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to agree about everything. Reconciliation focuses on the relationship, while resolution focuses on the problem. When we focus on reconciliation, the problem loses significance and often becomes irrelevant.

Thus people--so it seems to me-- Become good friends from sheer ennui.

Was this normalcy-predictable patterns, the certainty of doing the same thing everyday? Because if so, normalcy was about to make me freak out and start screaming.

Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements.

Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.

We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground.

Why can't we all just get along?

I suppose the most important thing is to stay interested. It's very easy in life if you get to a place where you're successful to hit the same groove on the record player over and over again because it's safe.

That which two will, takes effect.

People are reluctant to cite boredom as grounds for divorce.

If we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary.

Nothing fails like success when you rely on it too much.

It was the same with friendship. Disagreement between friends and spouses, too had to be carefully handled. If the time you spent with friends was consumed by disagreement, then there was no room for the essence of friendship, which was a sharing of the world. And that sharing involved seeing things the same way, or at least seeing things through the eyes of the friend.

Too much success gets you resting on your laurels and creates a kind of quicksand that you can't get out of.

You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, One average mind- with one thought less, each year.