I don't like the word 'autobiography.' I rather like the term 'autofiction.' The second you make a script out of the story of your life, it becomes fictional. Of course, the truth is never far. But the story is created out of it.

This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.

Life is complex. You don't have any person who is nice from the beginning until the end. You don't always have the notion of redemption. The bad people don't always pay.

To speak behind others' backs is the ventilator of the heart.

I had this fantasy that in a democracy the government was the population. So I came to America and got a big slap in my face... Americans were not what I thought. I thought I was going to see bastards and I saw nice people, very friendly to me.

I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.

War always takes you by surprise.