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.

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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.

Milos Forman

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.

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

I worked with Jack Nitzsche for 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' and we'd booked a symphony orchestra. He dismissed them and came with a little man who poured water into glasses of different sizes to make a glass harmonica. And most of the music for the film was that - with some Indian flutes and some drums.

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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.

Milos Forman

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.

Milos Forman

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.'

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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.

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.

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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.

Milos Forman

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.

Milos Forman

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

Milos Forman

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.

Milos Forman