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.

We can't talk about the book [Albert Camus] wanted to write because we have barely its beginnings. He had written hardly any of it, but he needed to write it. It seems to me that if you look at the style of The First Man it conforms much more to who he was as a man, it resembles him very closely.

I think for an artist what is most important is to touch as many hearts as possible.

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

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'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.

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.