People who make documentaries have to be faithful to the facts. But when you are making a drama, a fiction based on the life, all you have to be faithful to is the spirit of the facts, which I think I was in every case. As long as you don't violate their spirit, you can play with the facts.

When you finish a film, before the first paying audience sees it, you don't have any idea. You don't know if you made a success or a flop, when it comes to the box office.

I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.

You know, 20 years... the films of television when it started, the literature, radio in communist countries, they're clean as a whistle; there was no violence, no sex, no drugs, nothing.

Communists love to make films about composers, because composers compose music and don't talk subversive things.

I think everybody dreamt somehow to make a film in Hollywood, you know.

Memories are doing funny things to us.