I have never been a victim of antisemitism - if you put to one side my war-time experience. That said, I am lucky not to have been sent into a concentration camp.

I was brought up in a Jewish home, but I was brought up to be human - not fanatical, which is something that I don't appreciate at all. I learned to become a humanist and not to dwell on the differences between Jews and Christians.

With time, art developed Bip, my alter ego. He was not only a lion tamer or a street musician but a soldier revealing the tragedy of ephemeral life.

There is only one Marceau.

Bip is the romantic and burlesque hero for our time. Bip is a modern-day Don Quixote.

I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world.

Dance is in the air, pirouettes, very difficult. Mime is on the floor, like Spanish dancing perhaps, and very often in slow motion.

I don't want our youth to become anti-romantic. We have to make room for the soul.

When you're in a play, 50 percent is the genius of the actor, 50 percent is the genius of the author. When a mime is not perfect, you see nothing.

I started under my master, Etienne Decroux, who taught me a new grammar for mime he called statuary mime. This grammar brings style creations. Without it, no art survives.