It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first and foremost, especially if his creation does not side-step the problems of his time.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

When I see a new face, something sets off an alarm bell inside me. 'slow down! Danger!' Even when the attraction is strongest, I am on my guard.

No doubt our love was still there, but quite simply it was unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. It was no longer anything except a patience with no future and a stubborn wait.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality ... we can no longer hope to save everything, but ... we can at least try to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.