Like morality, literature needs to be universal. So that the writer must put himself on the side of the majority, of the two billion starving, if he wishes to be able to speak to all and be read by all. Failing that, he is at the service of a privileged class and, like it, an exploiter.
Jean-Paul SartreIn a country lacking leaders, in Africa, for instance, how could a native educated in Europe refuse to become a professor, even at the price of his literary vocation?
Jean-Paul SartreTotal war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world.
Jean-Paul SartreThe more one is absorbed in fighting evil, the less one is tempted to place the good in question.
Jean-Paul SartreEvery age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Jean-Paul Sartre