If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead.

Poland is different from the other so-called socialist countries. We have a different background. Poland belongs to the West, not the East. We belong to the Mediterranean, Latin culture, not to the Byzantine, which is very different and which you find in Bulgaria and even parts of Czechoslovakia and, of course, Romania.

Because of my parents' love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia - first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

I have always thought of myself as a Czechoslovak Catholic.

The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm's highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.

There was a joke in Czechoslovakia: The Communist Party dance, it's one step forward, two steps backward, and everyone is still clapping.

I am just sorry my own mother had to live under that regime for most of her life. I was lucky. I got out and, 14 years later, Czechoslovakia became a free country. So I feel anger, even fury, at this bloody system that ruined so many people's lives for no reason whatsoever.

Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words, the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership, Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.

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

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

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?

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.

I had always wanted to make music on a big scale but never knew how it was going happen - until I saw a band in Oslo called Bridges. I was stunned. They had everything. The only thing they didn't have was me. I knew I needed to join, not for my own sake but for the band's. I knew I was a necessary ingredient.

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the '30s, East Germany in the '50s, Czechoslovakia in the '60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the '70s, China in the '80s and '90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists.

My mum was born in the former Czechoslovakia, and even though my grandparents weren't wealthy, they were aristocrats in their time.

Only weeks after Oslo began, when nearly all the world and most of Israel was drunk with the idea of peace, I argued that a Palestinian society not constrained by democratic norms would be a fear society that would pose a grave threat to Israel.

It is not surprising, then, that in the decade since Oslo began, Arafat used all the resources placed at his disposal to fan the flames of hatred against Israel.

The central premise behind Oslo was that if Arafat were given enough legitimacy, territory, weapons and money, he would use his power to fight terror and make peace with Israel.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

I worked in a bookstore in Oslo, importing the English-language books.

I've done drives through Budapest and Oslo and used to drive to Sardinia, too, which is quite a journey. Drives are an adventure because I don't plan them too carefully. I take detours depending on how I feel and usually stop and stay at places I like the look of.

My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it.

Bob Gates is really emblematic of the modern CIA. He joins it in 1968, just a day before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. And, of course, he rises very quickly. In less than six years, he's on the National Security Council staff, at the closing weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency and then on into Gerald Ford.

I was in Vienna in August 1968 for a meeting of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, of which I was co-founder, and we wanted a 20th country to join. They asked for a volunteer to go to Prague to get Czechoslovakia to do it, and my hand always goes up first.

I was born in a blizzard, a special out-of-season blizzard, the worst blizzard Oslo ever suffered. Family, home, circumstances, the country I lived in and the weather I was born in all conspired to make a skater of me.

In one way or another, President Obama's critics will dog him all the way to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and even his admirers will continue to have doubts about his accomplishments if not his promise.

I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Communism.

If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead.

By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market.

The period 1924 to 1929 was spent studying chemistry at the Czech Institute of Technology in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The supervisor of my thesis was Professor Emil Votocek, one of the prominent founders of chemical research in Czechoslovakia.