“But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.”

“You don't care what others think - which might be understandable. But you don't care even to make them think as you do?""No.""But that's...that's monstrous.""Is it? Probably. I couldn't say.”

“Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.”

“It doesn't say much. Only "Howard Roark, Architect". But it's like those mottoes men carved over the entrance of a castle and died for. It's a challenge in the face of something so vast and so dark, that all the pain on earth - and do you know how much suffering there is on earth? - all the pain comes from that thing y...ou are going to face. I don't know what it is, I don't know why it should be unleashed against you. I know only that it will be. And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world - and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer. May God bless you - or whoever it is that is alone to see the best, the highest possible to human hearts. You're on your way to hell, Howard.”

“How did you know what's been killing me? Slowly, for years, driving me to hate people when I don't want to hate... Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you--except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize. You mean, you want to hear? You want to know what I do and why I do it, you want to know what I think? It's not boring to you? It's important?”

“So I want to say that of all the people I have known, you are the only person I regret leaving behind.”

“The inexplicable is always terrifying. But it wouldn't be so frightening if you stopped to ask yourself whether there's ever been any reason why you should have been at the top... Oh, come, Peter, smile, I'm only kidding. One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.”