For most of my life, one of the persons most baffled by my own work was myself.

Everybody in mathematics had given up for 100 years or 200 years the idea that you could from pictures, from looking at pictures, find new ideas. That was the case long ago in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in later periods, but then mathematicians had become very abstract.

In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.

There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable

The straight line has a property of self-similarity. Each piece of the straight line is the same as the whole line when used to a big or small extent.

Some mathematicians didn't even perceive of the possibility of a picture being helpful. To the contrary, I went into an orgy of looking at pictures by the hundreds; the machines became a little bit better.

Fractal geometry is not just a chapter of mathematics, but one that helps Everyman to see the same world differently.