People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.

There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.

Switzerland is the perfect place where you have volatility at a municipal level that nothing up top - small units competing with each other.

I'm a private intellectual, not a public one.

Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.

Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination