Of course, [Albert Camus] wasn't an existentialist, but he was a committed man. He was a man of combat. It wasn't for nothing that he directed the Resistance journal called Combat.

The First Man is completely autobiographical. The mother [Albert Camus] describes is the woman I knew, and she was exactly as he describes her. And this teacher really existed.

[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.

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

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.

There is an interview given by [ Jean-Paul] Sartre in the USA where he is asked what the future of French literature is, and he replies that the next great writer of the future is [Albert] Camus.

There's no one who can say 'this person is wrong there and right here', and that 'one is right about that and wrong about this'. This is what could allow populations, or even two human beings, to live together. We will only solve problems by the acceptance of, and enrichment by, our differences.