Latest Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes from Interviews

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• I have changed as everyone changes: within a permanency.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Changed, I Have Changed

• I wrote in Les Mots that "I have often thought against myself." That sentence has not been
  understood either. Critics have seen in it a confession of masochism. But that is how one
  should think: revolting against everything "inculcated'' that one may have within oneself.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Thinking, May, Confession

• I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up against argument.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Opposites, Needs, Biographies

• The form [of literature] matters little to me, classical or not.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Littles, Matter, Literature

• That of War and Peace or of Almagestes. All are satisfactory. The only criterion of a work
  is its validity: that it should grip and that it should last.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  War, Lasts, Should

• [Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Despair, Kind, Beckett

• You see, the contemporary writer must write through his intimations of unease, while trying to elucidate them.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Writing, Trying, Contemporary

• In Guinea I could read [Franz] Kafka. I re-discover in him my own discomfort.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Guinea, Discomfort, My Own

• I think [Alain Robbe-Grillet] a good writer, but he speaks to the comfortable bourgeoisie.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Thinking, Bourgeoisie, Speak

• I should wish [Alain Robbe-Grillet] to realize that Guinea exists.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Wish, Realizing, Guinea

• Do you think I can read [Alain] Robbe-Grillet in an underdeveloped country? He does not feel himself maimed.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Country, Thinking, Doe

• What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Reality, Men, Color

• Heroism is not to be won at the point of a pen.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Heroism, Pens

• This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Merit, Tasks, Should

• I receive letters from workers, from secretaries. . . . They are the most interesting ones.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Interesting, Letters, Workers

• As long as the writer cannot write for the two billion men who are hungry, he will be oppressed by a feeling of malaise.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Writing, Men, Two

• The recent experiences of pocketbooks prove this. I have changed my public since my works have been published in a smaller format.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Changed, Prove, Format

• Besides one should not believe that the people only want reading that is easy to absorb.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Reading, Believe, People

• Take [Stéphane] Mallarme. I hold him to be the greatest of French poets, and I have taken some time to understand him !

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Taken, Poet

• [Stéphane Mallarmé] theory of the hermetic is a mistake, but he can be only difficult to read when he has difficult things to say.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Mistake, Theory, Difficult

• The public, too, has to make an effort in order to understand the writer who, though he renounce complacent obscurity, cannot always express his new-hidden thoughts lucidly and according to accepted models.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Order, Effort, Obscurity

• The way, applicable in our non-revolutionary societies, to prepare for the time when everyone will read, is to pose problems in the most radical and intransigent manner. This is what Alain Badiou has just done in Almagestes, where he puts language on trial with an intention
  of cleansing, of catharsis.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Done, Trials, Way

• I am not recommending "popular" literature which aims at the lowest.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Literature, Aim, Popular Literature

• In 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 Sartre

  Country, Europe, Leader

• 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 Sartre

  Class, Two, Wish