I myself owe everything to French books. They developed in my soul the sentiments of humanity which had been stifled by eight years of fanatical and servile education.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.
The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!
I had always studied French and was obsessed with French films. I hated the way American films always had happy endings. I liked the way French films had dark and unpleasant characters; it was much more realistic.
In addition to the research, I enjoyed learning French and assimilating the culture of another country.
For me, French is so rich and so sacred that learning it is like learning a foreign language.
One of the greatest joys in my life was giving a lecture in French at the College de France.
Growing up, books were my lifeline, and I owe a debt to those writers that can never be repaid. They saved my sanity and gave me a world I could escape to. If I can pay that forward to another person, that's all I ask.
When a French book becomes an international hit it is because of the author and not because of the language. The same goes for movies.
Books guided my life from high school, and the greatest, most interesting, most provocative, funniest, smartest people who ever lived in the last 200 or 300 years wrote those books. I would fall in love with Victor Hugo and read not just 'Les Miserables,' but 'Bug-Jargal' and 'The Toilers of the Sea' and so forth.
I ought to at least be able to read literature in French. I went to an enlightened grade school that started us on French in fifth grade, which meant that by the time I graduated high school I had been at it for eight years.