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

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

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.

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

Memories are doing funny things to us.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Morning has animated something in me, too, some dormant thing that for years has known only how to sit and wait. Get a move on, it says. Don't let the day get away.

Surround yourself with great people

I'm not necessarily that big of a clubbing junkie, but I really like dance music as a genre.

Stay focused. You gotta believe in yourself. I think that's the biggest thing I've been able to do throughout my whole career, even before I actually had a big career in this industry.

The energy of the crowd fuels something new inside. It reminds me to live in the moment.

Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night.

Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship. . . .It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are.

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.

If Martin Luther King were here he'd be very surprised at some of the sugar-coated versions of American history presented today.

Hags live. Women traveling into feminist time/space are creating Hag-ocracy, the place we govern. To govern is to steer, to pilot.