When the weather changes and hurricanes hit, nobody believes that the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed. It's the same stock market with the same mechanisms and the same people.

Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time.

One couldn't even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn't expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.

I don't seek power and do not run around

The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.

Many painters had a clear idea of what fractals are. Take a French classic painter named Poussin. Now, he painted beautiful landscapes, completely artificial ones, imaginary landscapes. And how did he choose them? Well, he had the balance of trees, of lawns, of houses in the distance. He had a balance of small objects, big objects, big trees in front and his balance of objects at every scale is what gives to Poussin a special feeling.

If you look at a shape like a straight line, what's remarkable is that if you look at a straight line from close by, from far away, it is the same; it is a straight line.