The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

I actually think of myself as quite a shy person, although I know I give the impression of someone much more confident. I think what I do have is a capacity to listen to the other, even if the other is an opponent. That leads, in all senses of the word, to an engagement.

I very seldom read back into what I've written.

A boycott is directed against a policy and the institutions which support that policy either actively or tacitly. Its aim is not to reject, but to bring about change.

I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.

Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

It has always seemed to me that those who are without power, who have to create their own in a makeshifit way, know more about life than those who govern.

So time doesn't count, and place does?' I said this to tease her. When I was a man, I liked teasing her and she went along with it, consenting, for it reminded us both of a sadness that had passed.

Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone.

If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.

Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced.

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

I use charcoal a lot. Partly because it has such a fantastic range but also because it is very easy to erase. For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.

Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.

Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.

You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why but the editorialists forget it terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.