The Nobel Prize comes from outside, it's a social recognition [reconnaissance] in a way. And I think a true artist is driven by interior necessities.

What the articles which have been written about The First Man propose is humility. The acceptance of these contradictions. Seeking an explanation is death. The lie is death in [Albert] Camus. That's why in Camus' play The Misunderstood the son dies, killed by his sister and his mother, because he lied. He never told them who he was. They killed him because they didn't recognise him.

[Albert Camus] positions are sensed. So, naturally, those intellectuals who don't have that experience have difficulty in comprehending it. But I think it made Camus more tolerant because he had already seen both sides of things when the others had only ever seen one. They imagine poverty, but they don't know what it is. In fact they've got a sort of bad conscience about the working classes.

[Albert] Camus points out that we have a lot of things to pass through. Everything has to be accepted before it can be improved.

Just after the war, the liberation of 1945, [Albert] Camus was well known, well loved by [Jean-Paul ] Sartre and all the intellectuals of that generation.

It's true that women appear very little in [Albert Camus] works. They have a very marginal place.

When [Jean-Paul] Sartre was asked whether or not he would live under a communist regime he said, "No, for others it's fine, but for me, no." He said it! So it's hard to say just how intellectual his stance is. How can you think that never in your life would you go to live in a communist regime and still say it's fine for everybody? A very difficult thing, that, but Sartre managed it.