Biography

[on censorship] Censorship was not invented by the communists. Through all cultural history there is censorship. Of course, if you are not adult enough, your parents tell you what you can do or what you can say, and when you are an adult, you know for yourself and you don't need parents to tell you. Censorship is the parents. Now, unfortunately society is not adult enough, and that's a problem. We lose our adults too early. Every one of us has their own censorship because censorship is another name for respect for other people. Or responsibility.

[on comedy] Good comedy should be about serious things. If you start to talk about serious things too seriously, you end up being ridiculous.

[on writer Bohumil Hrabal] I always admired in Hrabal the ability to look at people and see them as they truly are, with a truly uncompromising perspective, but he still loved people. He wasn't a misanthrope after all that. I would contrast with this the perspective of more recent Czech writers - and world literature in general - where I see a strong misanthropic tendency which is not there in Hrabal's work, where that love for people is really present.