Katharine Whitehorn Quotes

How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show - it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

Loopy as the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system is, it's better than what you'd probably get by putting such decisions in the federal government hands.

When censorship is intelligent, it will stop a film before it is made. If not, it is too late.

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

I turned to historical films because they pass censors more easily.

My lyrics aren't offensive. Some people find everything offensive.

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

I left Mexico for artistic survival. If I had stayed, I would have been forced by the government, who control the movie business, to direct TV shows or commercials or infomercials for the government.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

If art is singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent.

For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, 'Television won't like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!'

A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.

A lot of my movies were completely destroyed by the censors, who can be pretty arbitrary. They're not completely fair with how they treat one person vs. another.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.

The notion of artistic responsibility begs questions with no satisfactory conclusions, the most inevitable and ineffectual being that we should just keep thinking and talking about it, given that the alternative - a governmental body monitoring the movies we make and see - is unacceptable.

Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.

Obviously I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

I don't know that a political climate - as long as it's still a free country - makes much difference in the film world.

I've been involved with violent movies, and then I've also said at a certain point, 'I can't take it anymore. Please cut it.' You know, you've got to respect the filmmaker, and it's a really tough issue.

I think they should make it a felony to criticise a film product. Particularly my film product. It's anti-American.

There are stories you can tell on TV that can't be told in movies anymore.

I must say here in France I had more serenity or security as I was working because I knew I was making the film the way I wished and that the film would be seen, ultimately, which is not always the case in Iran. In Iran, you always work having in mind this worry of will I be able to carry on my project as I wish and will the audience see the film.

Music is an artform, and I always though art was beyond censorship. I thought this was a common view. Apparently, I was wrong.