A civil servant doesn't make jokes.

A civil servant doesn't make jokes

When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship - 'Ode to Friendship.' Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.

Politics separate men by bringing them together only superficially. Art and culture unite us in a common anguish that is our only possible fraternity, that of our existential and metaphysical community.

I was born near Bucharest, but my parents came to France a year later. We moved back to Romania when I was thirteen, and my world was shattered. I hated Bucharest, its society, and its mores - its anti-Semitism for example.

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.