My parents lived a modest life, and their main concern was the education of their children. My father was a self-taught man but had a great intellectual curiosity, not only for biblical and talmudic texts, but also for philosophy, psychoanalysis and history.

An important event in my scientific life has been my appointment as a Professor at the College de France in 1973.

Shortly after my Ph.D., Alfred Kastler urged me to accept a teaching position at the University of Paris. I followed his advice and started to teach at the undergraduate level.

The way it works in our family is, it's the family business. Much like in the Mafia. Every child is given the opportunity to act at a young age and to learn what it's like to be in the business. But I didn't really know I wanted to act when I was a child.

There's something about being with a group of people who become like family that must be needed in society.

For me, there's nothing better than getting immersed in a sprawling, epic, multi-generational family saga, and 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the most sprawling, epic, and multi-generational of them all.

My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.'