“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 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....”

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1950)

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William Faulkner 214
American writer 1897–1962

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“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.”

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Variant: 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

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