Here’s an excerpt from William Faulkner’s 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech, actually presented to him in 1950. An optimistic view of a writer’s duty. The full text is below. Ladies and gentlemen, I feel 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 profit, 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 difficult to find a dedication for the money…