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" I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone. "

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" 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. "

" I am absolutely against any violence. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We have funny ideas about how people in mental institutions act. We think of drooling and people going booga-booga and climbing the wall. These are exceptional cases. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by show business, the theater. "

" Milan Kundera was my literature professor. He's a Francophile, so he made us read French novels like 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' which I made a version of many years later as 'Valmont.' "

" Holocaust films will be made and should be made as long as we can't understand what makes people so cruel to each other. "

" Individuals fighting or rebelling against the status quo, the establishment, is good for drama. "

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

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

" Mediocrity never goes away - but neither, I hope, do those who are willing to challenge it. "

" 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? "

" The way one perceives a book and a film are totally different. You read a book in the privacy of your room. You are the boss; you set the pace and rhythm of your reading. In the movie house, you can't do that. "

" Memories are doing funny things to us. "

" I don't mind getting involved in a risky project as long as I don't have to stay married to it if the script turns out lousy. "

" Well, I wouldn't say that this experience had any influence on my decision to do this film about Andy, because Andy was apolitical. Andy was never political. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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