Faulkner identified the human heart in conflict with itself

Faulkner seems that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for earnings, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be tough to find a dedication for the cash part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But Faulkner would like to manage the same with the acclaim too, by using this instant as a pinnacle from which Faulkner might be listened to by the juvenile men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among who is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the juvenile man or woman composing today has disregarded the problems of the human heart in confrontation with itself which alone can make good composing because only that is worth composing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, overlook it eternally, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the vintage verities and truths of the heart, the vintage universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and condemned - love and respect and shame and dignity and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which no one loses anything of value, of victories without wish and, worst of all, without shame or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will compose as though he stood among and watched the end of man. Faulkner downs turn to accept the end of man. It is easy sufficient to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when ...