Prague Quotes

Once I accidentally left my passport in Nice, France, when I was on my way to Prague. Upon arriving in Vienna, after taking an overnight, and being asked to present my travel documents and realizing I forgot them at the hotel, they kicked me off the train and sent me back!

In some of the great cities of Europe – Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Brussels – tourists bored with life above ground can descend below. All these cities have sewer museums and tours, and all expose their underbelly willingly to the curious. But not London, arguably the home of the most splendid sewer network in Europe.

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.

I still have an accent. But when I return to Prague, I speak the language yet do not know what they are talking about.

Prague is not rife in Asian culture.

I’ve never been to Prague, and I’ve never been to Russia.

It’s the little things that stick with you though. Like the boring airport layovers and the bus breaking down in Prague. Those were the real bonding moments.

In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.

In Zagreb, the Old Town really could be Prague. You go two hours to the coast to Opatija, and you really could be in the South of France, in the Croatian Riviera. And then you head down the coast towards Split, and you get into more Turkish architecture, so you can double Istanbul.

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.

Everyone thinks my story should be marked by heroism, but there was no risk to myself. You see, no-one in Prague at that time thought they were going to be at war with England.

I spent four months in Prague in these blue rooms reacting to nothing and you basically place your faith in the hands of the director and the special effects co-coordinator and you keep your fingers crossed and hope that the creatures look really scary.

The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution was that the former was mostly the work of Communist party members and others who wanted to bring about ‘socialism with a human face.’

I had travelled to a lot of cities in Europe before, but Prague was special. It held a mysterious attraction for me for during the time I was there.

Well, it’s the Czech Republic now, but more specifically Prague. I went there when I was 12.

When I entered the film school at the Prague Academy in the ’50s, it was the hardest time in the Communist countries. The ideological control of the society was almost absolute.

My parents married in 1959 and came to Amsterdam on honeymoon. That was a huge thing, event, for them. Now my children fly off for the weekend to Riga, Prague, or Barcelona.

We had a poster of the Davis Cup in 1986. It was in Prague, the Czech Republic against Sweden, and we went to watch, so I got the poster. You couldn’t get all the posters. You were lucky if you got one.

I ate fantastic Italian food in Croatia, which you wouldn’t expect. The food in Istanbul was amazing. I never would’ve expected that and the food, I guess you’re learning something about me, the food in Prague, they’re very, very heavy meat eaters, like, a lot of meat, which is great.

Now, actors get so familiarized with Eastern Europe. I never imagined I’d get as familiar with Budapest and Prague and places like that in my life.

Nowadays they either want to move the film to Canada or in some cases they go to Prague or Romania or they want to keep ’em down in L.A.

For those of us imprisoned in Poland, the Prague Spring was a harbinger of hope.

I go to Prague every year if I can, value my relationships there like gold, and feel myself in a sense Czech, with all their hopes and needs. They are a people I not only love, but admire.

Prague is the Paris of the ’90s.

My worst memory is of my first dance lesson as a 14-year old in Prague. My mother put me in this silver and pink lame dress. My hair was all curled, and it was the first time I wore a garter belt. I felt so out of place!

My role in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was a cameo, but it did expose me to cinema and took me to Cannes. I then did ‘Prague,’ which was a very niche film.

You don’t need to go to Rome, Prague or Vienna to find wonderful architecture, amazing stories and suprising, hidden gems.

I personally think Prague is more romantic than Paris. If you have a girlfriend, take her there.

The first thing to be said about ‘Prague Winter,’ former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s new book, is that she very wisely chooses to confront early on in it her apparent surprise at learning late in life that she was born Jewish.

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

I like Prague, it’s strange. All the houses you see look like Disney sets, with their bright colours.

Prague is a dark place.

My own interest in Kafka’s letter came about when I was writing an article on Peter Ginz, the boy novelist held in Terezin, not far from Prague, and exterminated in Auschwitz by the Nazis. The Ginz family were from more or less the same milieu as the Kafkas.

The close of my studies with a degree of a Dr. Ing. in 1929 coincided with the great economic crisis, and I was not able to find an academic position. I was therefore very grateful for a position in the newly created laboratory of G.J. Driza in Prague where rare chemicals were produced on small scale.

When I was at N.Y.U., I studied abroad in Prague, and I learned about some of the European animators, like Jan Svankmajer and Jiri Barta. I didn’t think at the time that I would end up doing anything like that, but I certainly thought it was very cool.