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My early years were hardly a model of focus, discipline, and direction. No one who met me as a teenager could have imagined my going into research and making important discoveries. No one could have predicted the arc of my career.

Patiently and with industry did I apply myself to study, for although I felt the impossibility of giving life to my productions, I did not abandon the idea of representing nature.

I did not find my studies particularly enthralling.

I think I became a writer because I didn't know of anything else to do. Maybe some incident from my childhood influenced me.

You can find inspiration when you're not even looking for it.

But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that's really worthwhile.

When we were studying at the Royal Antwerp Academy, we were taught to seek inspiration from everyone, everything and everywhere. My parents and grandparents were also a great inspiration for me a very young age.

At college, I wasn't passionate about anything I was studying.

Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.