The human heart in conflict with itself

He said this and more:

There are no longer problems of the spirit...Because of this,

the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the

problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which

alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing 

about, worth the agony and the sweat...

I believe that man will not merely endure:  he will prevail.  He

is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an

inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit

capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.  The

poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things.  It is his

privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding

him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion

and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.

The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can 

be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
(William Faulkner, Nobel speech, December 10, 1950)

And this:

"There are some things He said in the Book, and some things
reported of Him that He did not say.  And I know what you
will say now;  That if truth is one thing to me and another thing
to you, how will we choose which is truth?  You don't need to
choose.  The heart already knows.  He didn't have His Book
written to be read by what must elect and choose, but by the
heart, not by the wise of the earth because maybe they don't
need it or maybe the wise no longer have any heart, but by the
doomed and lowly of the earth who have nothing else to read
with but the heart.  Because the men who wrote His Book for
Him were writing about truth and there is only one truth and it
covers all things that touch the heart,' and McCaslin
(Isaac McCaslin in Part IV, The Bear)