I would hope that Europe always has a privileged relationship with the United States. The alternatives are not attractive.

The only successful revolution of this century is totalitarianism.

I work even when I am on vacation. You know that line by Stéphane Mallarmé, "All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book"? I am the kind of person who finds life interesting only if it is translated into writing, if it is parsed into words.

If you trace the history of Islamist terrorism, you see that its founders were great admirers of European fascism. They read the texts of European fascism, they quoted them in speeches and letters. This is not from the Koran - the Koran doesn't teach you how to repress people; there's nothing in there about women having to cover their faces, there's certainly nothing about suicide bombing.

I really like the United State, its relationship to space and time, its interest in mobility, its cosmopolitanism.

France is a country where thinking is supposed to be furtive, invisible, almost clandestine. France is a country of cliques and sects.

I reject the idea that there is some sort of existential "clash of civilizations." I am an interventionist, but not a militarist. War should always be a last resort.