Ayn Rand

But he still thought it self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how people could want to do otherwise; he had learned only that they did. It still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they weren’t. He knew that they weren’t.

She liked his face—its lines were tight and firm, it did not have that look of loose muscles evading the responsibility of a shape, which she had learned to expect in people’s faces.

“I have not said you needed it. But of all those whom you are saving from the storm tonight, I am the only one who will offer it.”

Their work was done. For the moment, there was no future. They had earned the present.

I’m going to have you at the price of more than myself: at the price of my self esteem—and I want you to know it.

You said once that celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate.”

The hours ahead, like all her nights with him, would be added, she thought, to that savings account of one’s life where moments of time are stored in the pride of having been lived.

You’re the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love—and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool’s self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one’s code of values.

She felt his arm remain about her shoulders a moment longer than he intended her to notice.

“John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.”