Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Eric-Emmanuel Schmittis a French and Belgian dramatist, novelist, fiction writer and film director. His plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the world...
NationalityBelgian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 March 1960
CountryBelgium
above apartments bought ham money people slice soon top trapped
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.
books consider house piano
I consider a house without books or a piano to be unfurnished.
music spend
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.
Balthazar Balsan is not a self-portrait. If he was, I'd have made the character more flattering.
afraid stop
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.
ask director grew offered people stories telling
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.
dislike mirrors
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.
life time tiresome tiring
Everything in life can be tiring and tiresome if we don't have the ability to look at it as if it's the first time we've ever done it.
imagination life
You have to really use your imagination to refresh your daily life.
car maybe people quiet spend time
In Brussels, you are able to have a lot of appointments in a day. In Paris, you can have one, two, maybe three, but you spend all your time on the road, in the car or in the suburbs. In Brussels, everything is easy. It's not a very big city, and the people are very quiet and warm.
again decide evenings fact next obsessed spending
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.
marriage okay
I am not married anymore. I hate marriage... but it's okay now.
drawings few
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.