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

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.

Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour.

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem.

When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need five days to get the world I've left out of my head and ten days or a fortnight not talking to anyone to hold what I need to hold inside my head.