Everyone has so much hope for a better humanity, and many, including [Jean Paul] Sartre, turned to the idea of communism in its beginnings. Generosity had a place in people's hopes.

I think [Albert Camus] wanted to write something to explain who he was, and how he was different from the age that had been conferred upon 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.

In publishing The First Man I said to myself, 'this is going to be awful,' but awful from the point of view of the criticism. I'm not afraid of [Albert] Camus' public. I'm afraid of what will be written in the papers.

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

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] was not an existentialist!