Milos Forman

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“I am absolutely against any violence.”

“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 think everybody dreamt somehow to make a film in Hollywood, you know.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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