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.

Some suggestions for you :

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

You have to really use your imagination to refresh your daily life.

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