It was a very big gamble. I lost my job in France, I received a job in which was extremely uncertain, how long would IBM be interested in research, but the gamble was taken and very shortly afterwards, I had this extraordinary fortune of stopping at Harvard to do a lecture and learning about the price variation in just the right way.

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.

I didn't want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure - I wanted to do something different.

I spent my time very nicely in many ways, but not fully satisfactory. Then I became Professor in France, but realized that I was not - for the job that I should spend my life in.

The beauty of what I happened by extraordinary chance to put together is that nobody would have believed that this is possible, and certainly I didn't expect that it was possible. I just moved from step to step to step.

When people ask me what's my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.

A fractal is a mathematical set or concrete object that is irregular or fragmented at all scales...