I know where I'm going and I have told the French. I am sure if hope is there, we will be able to put France back on its feet... to live better in five years than we do today. ↗
What the French want is coherence, stability and justice. If I am in a favorable position today, it's because my fellow citizens want to make the effort to straighten out the country, and at the same time they want it to be just and equitable. ↗
Instead, we did take our eye off the ball. We decided, instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, to go into Iraq. And today, unfortunately, if you look at the situation on the ground, it is a mess. ↗
But the idea of a man making his living by writing seemed, in that hardy environment, so fantastic that even today I am sometimes myself assailed by a feeling of unreality. ↗