howard-roark

If you want my advice, Peter,_ he said at last, __ou__e made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don__ you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?

I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin. your mouth, your hands...I want you like an animal...or a whore.

And she thought, with a vicious thrill, of what these people would do if they read her mind in this moment; if they knew that she was thinking of a man in a quarry, thinking of his body with a sharp intimacy as one does not think of another__ body but only of one__ own. She smiled; the cold purity of her face prevented them from seeing the nature of that smile.

When they lay in bed together it was__s it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded__n act of violence. It was surrender, made the more complete by the force of their resistance. It was an act of tension, as the great things on earth are things of tension. It was tense as electricity, the force fed on resistance, rushing through wires of metal stretched tight; it was tense as water made into power by the restraining violence of a dam. The touch of his skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and denial.

I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin. your mouth, your hands...__ want you like an animal...or a whore.

A man__ spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man__ first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.

In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone... Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner.

Roark spoke quietly. He was the only man in the room who felt certain of his own words.

He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.

He__ not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander__ delusion__restige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded.

The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act__he process of reason__ust be performed by each man alone.

I__ not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it__ not really pain.

She found a dark satisfaction in pain__ecause that pain came from him.

What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture, and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it.""Isn't it?

...the best is a matter of standards__nd I set my own standards.

It__ a law of survival, isn__ it?__o seek the best. I didn__ come for your sake. I came for mine.