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

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.

Usually you don't think about re-releasing an old movie.

You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

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.

I lived long enough in a society where freedom of speech was nonexistent, and I know what kind of misery that creates - starting with the fact that life becomes very boring for people who just try to survive, and are quiet, and try not to buck the system. And, of course, it can be devastating for people who try to speak against it.

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