The Creator.

"The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known an unforgotten moment--a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger's face seen in a bus--a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on a afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had not gone on living as if no answer was necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer."

"But 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. There primary act--the process of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of the body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred."

"The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary. The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasites concern is the conquest of man."

"Men have been taught that is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that is a virtue to swim the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Man have been taught that is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."

"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 selfess man is the one who does not think, feel, or act. These are the functions of the self."
--Excerpts from Howard Roark's speech at the trial during which he was acquitted of all charges.

"I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame or that he won't die someday. But he's living it. I think he is the conception of what it really means, Howard Roark. You know, how people long to be eternal. But they die with they every day that passes. When you meet them, they are not what you met last. In every given hour, they will kill a part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict--and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, not reversed and nothing unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they had never held for a single moment? But Howard--one can imagine him existing forever." - Steven Mallory in regard to Roark's egotist and immortality.

"They stood at the rail and looked at the black void. Space was not to be seen, only felt but the quality of the air against their faces. A few stars gave reality to the empty sky. A few sparks of white fire in the water gave life to the ocean."
-D. Francon and Gail Wynand on his yacht, as he was understanding and surprisingly discovered their similarities.

"He slouched casually against the glass pane of his bedroom; the weight of the gun on his palm. Today, he thought; was toda? Did anything happen that would help me now and give meaning to this moment?" --The moment when Gail Wynand found no reason, no excitement, no fear in potentially taking his own life. And so, he didn't.

"They did not speak about their work. Mallory told outrageous stores and Francon laughed like a child. They talked about nothing in particular, sentences that only had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in the warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation. They were simply four people who liked being there together. The wall rizing in the darkness beyond the open door gave sanction to the rest, gave them toe right to lightness, the building on which they had all worked together, the building that was like a low, audible harmony to the sound of their voices. Roark laughed as Francon had never seen him laugh anywhere else, his mouth loose and young."
--As the Stoddard Temple was rising, Francon, Steve, Roark and Mallory flourished in total harmony that did not need words to clarify. It was unsaid. They were there for one goal; to built a temple, a shrine, not to a God or some false deity, but to nature and man together--their eternally intertwined nature and impossibility of separation. They were there for their own goals, which happen to be the same. It was the common man would call it; real.

"He went to the quarry and worked that day as usual. She did not come to the quarry and he did not expect her to come. But the thought of her remained. He watched it with curiousity. It was strange to be conscious of another person's existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications, neither pleasant nor painful, merely final like an ultimatum. It was important to know that she existed in the world, how she awakened in the morning, of how she moved, with her body still his, now his forever."
--After finding Francon, Roark's life took the path he wanted it to without her ever leaving his thoughts. She was there, whether in reality or in memory which never dimmed. Their lives ran close. They tortured one another, tore another apart with reason to lose all fear of a world not known to either of them only to ultimately have each other. When they met, there was no greet, there was no introduction, it was merely known that it had to be; they had to be. And it was.