p.61 He [Roark] was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange quality: it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or perhaps that he was and they weren't.

Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I’m not the Gail Wynand you’d heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love you’d want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because that’s the impossible, in the inconceivable for you in your relations with people. That would be the one gift, the great exception you’d want to offer the man you loved. But it wouldn’t be easy for you.

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.

Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.

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

A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition.

As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more.