“I work even when I am on vacation. You know that line by Stéphane Mallarmé, “All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book”? I am the kind of person who finds life interesting only if it is translated into writing, if it is parsed into words.”

I really like the United State, its relationship to space and time, its interest in mobility, its cosmopolitanism.

America creates myths by focusing a lot of energy on its history and using it – – not always, but sometimes – for constructive purposes.

I reject the idea that there is some sort of existential “clash of civilizations.” I am an interventionist, but not a militarist. War should always be a last resort.

France is a country where thinking is supposed to be furtive, invisible, almost clandestine. France is a country of cliques and sects.

The euro is a great achievement. It’s a symbolic achievement. But, the European constitution was a missed opportunity.

The only successful revolution of this century is totalitarianism.

Why should an intellectual have to renounce the pleasures of life? I am not a hermit. I am a man of flesh and blood. In fact, if you look at my name in French, that schizophrenia, that aspiration to several lives is contained in my name. Lévy is also les vies – “the lives”.

Even if it doesn’t sound like it at first, that’s an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role.

I would sooner want a strong partnership with the United States – even with (US President George W.) Bush, who I think is the worst president in a long, long time. I would sooner want a friendship with Bush than with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.

I don’t really believe in dialogue; I am too Nietzschean for that. We need to have a warrior conception of philosophy.

I definitely don’t agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States – this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.

You can be horrified by the state of the prisons, the misery in certain neighborhoods of its cities, or their level of poverty.

Anti-Americanism, by which I mean a hatred for America as such-its transformation into a metaphysical category, which incarnates all the evil in the world-is one of fascism’s favorite themes.

For me, dressing is always a question of principle, respect, a sense of order, not to disguise myself, even in rotten places.

Each time a Palestinian or an Israeli dies, it is terrible. But they have the right to have a funeral, to be buried, to have a place in the memory of the survivors. And then you have these other places – Darfur, Rwanda.

Even if the Israel-Palestine question were solved – and I think and hope that one day soon it will be – this wouldn’t stop one person from becoming a terrorist.

I don’t care about vacations. I go away and I come back real quick because I like my work. I really like my work to consume me.

To reach the goals of your life, you need discipline, you need luck and you need something as important as these two: Vacations!

Life is a vacation from two eternities.

Death is the Christian’s vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home.

I can’t tell you how great it is to get away with a girlfriend for four days shopping in Paris. Now that’s what I call a vacation.

My best vacation is somewhere I could hide, somewhere warm and not a lot of people around.

Love is hard work. It is the hardest work I know of, work from which you are never entitled to take a vacation.

The thing I love most about going on vacation is that I get to leave behind any kind of schedule. My entire life is scheduled from morning to night, and when I’m on vacation, there is no schedule.