I think it's impossible to predict the future but it is possible to look at the past and see how one can do differently from what one's ancestors have done and learn from their mistakes, and one can see how even though there are enormous forces which stop one doing what one wants to, there are little holes in which the individual can do something.

The main purpose of engaging in conversation can no longer be personal advancement or respectability. Instead, I'd like for us to use conversations to create equality, to open ourselves to strangers, and, most practically, to remake our working world.

One of the great ambitions is to discover the diversity of the world, to discover who inhabits the world.

France is an idea, not a territory. They pay more attention to intellectuals here; they give artists and writers the feeling they're valued.