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

Europe has certainly lost confidence in itself. This was something that, when I was a young man, we never imagined would happen.

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

Why should an intellectual have to renounce the pleasures of life? I am not a hermit. I am a man of flesh and blood. In fact, if you look at my name in French, that schizophrenia, that aspiration to several lives is contained in my name. Lévy is also les vies - "the lives".

The terrorists exist, and I think we must speak to them, not to establish a dialogue-since for serious terrorists that is unfortunately out of the question - but to learn how their brains work, to be better able to fight them.

I definitely don't agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States - this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.

Even if it doesn't sound like it at first, that's an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role.