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

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" 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. "

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

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

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

" I am absolutely against any violence. "

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

" I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival. "

" 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. "

" First of all, to defend my work, I had to believe that I am doing a totally silly, stupid, innocent comedy. "

" Memories are doing funny things to us. "

" 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. "

" It's not a lighthearted decision to change your language, your country, your citizenship, and come to a world where you don't know anybody, to leave a place where you've had opportunities to build friendships from childhood. That's quite a big decision to make. "

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

" 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. "

" When you make a film, you realize that the audience will be powerless to stop it or flip back to refresh their memories or skip the boring parts. They are at the mercy of your storytelling. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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? "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "