The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

Where’s your I?” “Where’s yours, Peter?” she asked quietly.

Damn. Bitch work

People want nothing but mirrors around them.

You want to sell yourself for the lowest motive to the lowest person you can find.”

lowest motive: Peter acquiring Stoneridge, lowest person: Gail

“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores.

It’s not a bromide, it’s practically an institution.

There was no goal to this journey, only the journey itself,

it's the cliiiimmmbbbb

This was not a reunion, but just one moment out of something that had never been interrupted.

Life with the people you care the most should always feel this way.

There were many comfortable chairs around him, but Toohey preferred to remain on the floor.

A glimpse on Toohey's personality

and its ornament is derived from the rules of its theme and its structure,”

As with a lot of things in life.

He turned Stoneridge over to Neil Dumont and Bennett.

Maybe this is the part where he becomes like Francon...

Then they noticed that this was said in the middle of a crowded platform, with people and baggage racks hurrying past.

Lost within themselves, unhurried, amongst a crowd, they stare at each other in eternal acknowledgement.

When she realized that she loved their isolation, she broke it at once.

I'm not sure what this is but why does she always feel the need to do this?

We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form.

A prison only by the power of its own perfection.

A utopia. Why would you ever want to leave somewhere that has everything you want and need.

But this is what it had really been built for—to have Roark stand at that window—

wow, i just can't

Whenever a new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom.

The critic will simply observe the life of the masses and evaluate its artistic points for the public.

Is this not what has been happening today? Do we not pay more attention to events that entertain us rather than inform us?

Nobody understands what a terrible handicap it is to be born rich.

that public favor had ceased being a recognition of merit, that it had become almost a brand of shame.

But to get things done, you must love the doing,

“I’ve never seen anyone relax like that.”

skin like paper that had been crumpled and then smoothed out.

Beautiful Imagery

It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want.

unless it’s an act inside, for oneself, and then there is no limit, no way out, no reality....

Inception Katie's dead af

only distinction I can claim is that my botches end up in my own wastebasket.

Roark, floating like a piece of driftwood, held a power greater than that of the engine in the belly of the yacht.

What poetry: there's something to be understood in this sentence...

What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others.

A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.”

The independent man kills them—because they don’t exist within him

I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men.

Toohey had told the truth; he had no other purpose in mind.

This is what Roark was afraid of, to include something on what's already designed perfectly with no purpose.

a doctor turned murderer,

turning gold into lead.

From perfection to trash; as oppose to "from lead to gold".

Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.

Tell them to laugh at everything.

Don’t let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul—and his soul won’t be sacred to him.

where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings.

love this.

Where there’s service, there’s someone being served.

Since all must serve all.

An average drawn upon zeroes—

Vox dei.

"The voice of god". Here, we can very clearly see Ellsworth's conceit.

left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken,

thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage.

How does one gets robbed of this courage? What courage is there to be robbed of?

The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.

The book's main theme.

Any concrete, mental content inside the human shape does not matter. A great brain or a great talent or a magnificent character are of no importance as compared to that intrinsic value all possess as men—

This is what further defines Ayn Rand's definition of "equality".