My mum wanted me to be a doctor because she worked in nursing. So she was quite disappointed when I came back from a holiday in France, and said I wanted to be a chef.
France desperately needs to work on its competitiveness and attractiveness.
In France, I am the fifth artisan to produce his own chocolate, and the others have been doing it for a long time.
At my home in the southwest of France, I grow oak, hazel, and lemon trees in my backyard.
I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.
In France, Christmas is a family holiday. You stay home. New Year's Eve is when you go out.
Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.
There will always be nations. The United States will last a long, long time, I believe. France and Germany and Japan, China, other nations, they're going to exist. But they're losing their significance and ability to deal with certain matters.
For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.
Women take great care of themselves in France. It's a culture dedicated to making women beautiful and to manners.
