It took me about 6 months, but I finally finished this 1069-page monster. Parts of it completely confused me, parts of it got me all riled up and angry at the world, parts of it made me grumpy and irritated at the author...but overall, I'm glad I read it. Even though this book is largely about industry, business, and self-promotion, I realized that most of my favorite quotes are the parts about love. Ayn Rand believes in valuing one's own mind and best interests above all else, and she uses these thousand-and-so pages to basically dismiss and spit on popular "morals," like sacrificing oneself for the greater good and spreading the wealth. I disagree with her on most things, but there's no doubt she put a LOT of thought and passion into her ethics, and I respect her for that. She also managed to create an interesting, even slightly touching plot to go with what essentially is a long-winded treatise of her philosophy (...more than I can say for Nietzsche). Anyway, here are my favorite parts:
"Are you saying," he asked slowly, "that I rose in your estimation when you found that I wanted you?"
"Of course."
"That's not the reaction of most people of being wanted."
"It isn't."
"Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them."
"I feel that others live up to me, if they want me. And that is the way you feel, too, Hank, about yourself--whether you admit it or not."
"You still love me--even if there's one expression of it that you'll always feel and want, but will not give me any longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant to another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't be treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values. No matter what happens in the future, we'll always be what we were to each other, you and I, because you'll always love me."
"People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked. And if one gains the immediate purpose of the lie--the price one pays is the destruction of that which the gain was intended to serve. The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on."
If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn...
