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.

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

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

For me, speaking is work. It's not like when you breathe.

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.

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 I came for the first time to the United States, visiting, I was absolutely fascinated by New York.