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" Humor was not important only for me, humor was important for this nation for centuries, to survive, you know. "

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" Memories are doing funny things to us. "

" Now, after the communist take-over in 1948, the amount of feature films produced dwindled to three a year, while the school was, you know, every year another three, four, five students. "

" 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. "

" Technically, you can learn everything on the set as an assistant director, and rather quickly. "

" You think you can do anything, and then you slowly learn how wrong you are. "

" 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. "

" 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 either have commercial pressure or ideological pressure. I prefer commercial pressure; otherwise, you can be at the mercy of one or two idiots. "

" I think if I tried very hard, I could do a novel or a play, a poem. I could possibly paint a picture, but I know I can't write music. And still, it is the most accessible of all arts, as you know when you hear a tune. "

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

" If it weren't for 'Cuckoo's Nest,' it would be very difficult for me. It gave me a cushion to live at my artistic pace and not fear I wouldn't have money to live on. "

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

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

" So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris. "

" And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted - steal, you know, lie, whatever. "

" 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. "

" I was born in a small town. My parents, my father was a teacher. My mother was a housewife. "

" I can say, with a little arrogance, that I could be an actor, a cameraman, a writer, but composers are the most mysterious people. "

" When I entered the film school at the Prague Academy in the '50s, it was the hardest time in the Communist countries. The ideological control of the society was almost absolute. "

" I don't think I was ever as fascinated or have had so much respect for anybody like James Cagney. "

" In Czechoslovakia, we consider Kafka a very funny man. A humorist. "

" 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. "

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

" And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think(s), you know. "

" I am absolutely against any violence. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Because I just loved to spend two years of my life in the company of Andy Kaufman and other characters. "

" First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined. "

" A modern hero is very ambiguous. I went through some very rough times in Czechoslovakia - the occupation by the Germans at the end of the war. We had people going against their tanks with brooms. Are they nuts, or are they heroes? "