Each time a Palestinian or an Israeli dies, it is terrible. But they have the right to have a funeral, to be buried, to have a place in the memory of the survivors. And then you have these other places - Darfur, Rwanda, even Colombia - where the dead have no faces and literally cannot be counted. Theirs are minuscule lives moving toward imperceptible deaths. For me, it is the essence of tragedy.

People always think that loyalty is laudable. People are always saying that we must remain faithful to tradition, to family, to our class, to our ideas. Of course not! That would be equivalent to zero brain activity. If you really want to think, to seek truth, to advance intellectually, you must turn your back on clichés, on preconceived ideas - even those belonging to your spiritual family. For an intellectual, his true duty is not to fidelity, but to infidelity.

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

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.

For me, dressing is always a question of principle, respect, a sense of order, not to disguise myself, even in rotten places.

The conservatives want to revolutionize the world all at once. And that's a dangerous proposal.

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