[Albert Camus]didn't have much hope that things would work out, but he wanted them to. Algeria had reached such a degree of violence that once such violence is created there's no more room for reflection. And there's no mediating position. If you look at Bosnia today, the Croats, Bosnians and Serbs, they've all created so much horror that one starts to wonder how these peoples can live together, after having done what they have. Already the violence has reached such a degree that everybody is living in hate, there's no possibility of reflection, no mediating position.

During the '80s, those you would call the young philosophers of France, such as Bernard-Henri Lévy and [André ] Gluxman, pointed out that Camus had said things no one wanted to hear in the political arena. They said it was [Albert] Camus who was right, not those who had slid under the influence of Sartre, that is to say an unconditional devotion to Communism as seen in the Soviet Union. And ever since then the evaluation of Camus has continued to modify up until today

[Albert Camus] was completely intransigent, and that's not at all a neutrality. It's combat, it's a man who involved himself, committed himself.

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.

Where [Albert Camus] is in exile isn't especially in Paris or elsewhere, but from the intellectual world, because of his origins.

There are indications that today the intellectuals are coming back to [Albert] Camus. History has given them reason to, with the fall of communism.

In fact it was always the Communist problem which was responsible for the opposition to [Albert] Camus. It was always and overall a political thing, a kind of misunderstanding.