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.

People must not think that all bad in man which is unleashed, the moment you impose censorship disappears from man.

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

The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.

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

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

Definitely it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia. It was always abysmal stuff.