Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt Quotations

I have some beautiful 20th-century drawings and a few paintings, but I'm not a collector, and I'm not particularly attached to objects.

I consider a house without books or a piano to be unfurnished.

I can spend the day without writing or reading, but I can't spend a day without listening to music. I listen to music on a Walkman; it's from the 19th century, I know.

I am not married anymore. I hate marriage... but it's okay now.

Balthazar Balsan is not a self-portrait. If he was, I'd have made the character more flattering.

When I start a book, it's every day. There is no Saturday, no Sunday. It's every day, because if I stop one day, I'm afraid of losing the book and losing the energy.

I wanted to become a director before I wanted to become a writer. When I was 10, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said, 'Walt Disney.' I wanted to make films. But I wasn't offered a camera. I was offered language. So I started telling stories in the theatre and then in my novels.

I really enjoy spending Sunday evenings with friends, because Sunday evenings are always frightening. You are obsessed by the fact that you are working again the next day. And sometimes you get the blues. I always decide to spend it with friends. It's very nice.

I don't like apartments - the idea of other people living, copulating and defecating above me - they make me feel as trapped as a slice of ham in a sandwich. When I was a student in Paris, I always rented attics right at the top of buildings, and as soon as I was making enough money, I bought houses.

I find mirrors detestable; I dislike seeing myself. Of course, there's a mirror in the bathroom, but it's a magnifying one for shaving. Photographs are fine, but I don't like mirrors because they take you by surprise.