What I like about masturbation is that you don't have to talk afterwards.

I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone.

Ideological pressure is much more crippling than commercial pressure. Crippling to your own freedom of thinking and creating, crippling the final results. If you wanted to succeed during the really hard-line totalitarian regime, you have to make so many compromises to please the censors that you don't recognize the original idea from the final result.

Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.

I'm convinced the Beatles are partly responsible for the fall of Communism.

So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.

Well, listen, you know, the Czech saying is, you know, when you are drowning you are grabbing even a little twig. That's what all Czechs were doing, grabbing for... with the hope for this little twig.