Passion

"It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama."

"He loved her for being so beautiful, and he hated her for it. He loved how she put shiny stuff on her lips for him, and he also reviled her for it. He wanted her to walk home alone, and he wanted to run after her and grab her up before she could take another step."

"I want you, Hank. I'm much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you - and the only thing I'm ashamed of is that I did not know it. I did not know why, for two years, the brightest moments I found were the ones in your office, where I could lift my head to look up at you. I did not know the nature of what I felt in your presence, nor the reason. I know it now. That is all I want, Hank. I want you in my bed - and you are free of me for all the rest of your time. There's nothing you'll have to pretend - don't think of me, don't feel; don't care - I do not want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it's to me you will come for that lowest one of your desires. I am an animal who wants nothing but the sensation of pleasure which you despise - but I want it from you. You'd give up amy height of virtue for it , while I - I haven't any to give up. There's none I seek or wish to reach. I am so low that I would exchange the greatest sight of beauty in the world for the sight of your figure in the cab of a railroad engine. Amd seeing it, I would not be able to see it indifferently. You don't have to fear that you're now dependent on me. It's I who will depend on any whim of yours. You'll have me anytime you wish, anywhere, on any terms. Did you call it the obscenity of my talent? It's such that it gives you a safer hold on me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as you please - I'm not afraid to admit it - I have nothing to protect from you and nothing to reserve. You think that this is a threat to your achievement, but it is not to mine. I will sit at my desk, and work, and when the things around me get hard to bear, I will think that for my reward I will be in your bed that night. Did you call it depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as your guilt, and I - as my pride. I'm more proud of it than anything I've done, more proud than of building the Line. If I'm asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it."

"I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue. Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each lettter. Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips. A name I won’t throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought. And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar form….. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart."

"It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she feared it still, lest if she adored him too much, then she would lose herself, become effaced, and she did not want to be effaced, a slave, like a savage woman. She must not become a slave. She feared her adoration, yet she would not at once fight against it."

"Lately I can't help wanting usto be like other people. For example, if I were a smoker,you'd lift a match to the cigarettejust as I put it between my lips. It's never been like thatbetween us: none of thateasy chemistry, no quick, half automaticflares. Everything between ushad to be learned. Saturday finds me broodingbehind my book, all my fantasiesof seduction run upagainst the rocks. Tell me againwhy you don't likesex in the afternoon?No, don't tell me--I'll never understand younever understand us, America's strangestloving couple: they neverdrink a bottle of wine togetherand rarely look at each other. Into each other's eyes, I mean."

"I have so much love for you, I could fill rooms with it. Buildings. You’re surrounded by it wherever you go, you walk through it, breathe it...it’s in your lungs, and under your tongue, and between your fingers and toes...” His mouth moved passionately over hers, urging her lips apart. It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis. Or at least that was how Poppy felt about it."

"People accuse me of falling in love easily. It just means that I'm able to see the beauty in most of the people who cross paths with me and I appreciate it for what it is and also for what it isn't. Love is imperfect. Falling for someone's flaws is just as necessary as falling for their strengths. And people like myself, who fall into love easily, are sometimes the loneliest souls around at the end of the day."

"I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like."

"When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better."

"Growth in love comes from a place of absence, where the imagination is left to it’s own devices and creates you to be much more then reality would ever allow."

"He brought out the worst in me, and was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay."

"Haven't I? - he thought. Haven't I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven't I thought of nothing else for two years? ... He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he had never allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be said within his own mind. Now it was as sudden and shocking as if he were saying it to her ... Since the first time I saw you ... Nothing but your body, that mouth of yours, and the way your eyes would look at me, if ... Through every sentence I ever said to you, through every conference you thought so safe, through the importance of all the issues we discussed ... You trusted me, didn't you? To recognize your greatness? To think of you as you deserved - as if you were a man? ... Don't you suppose I know how much I've betrayed? The only bright encounter of my life - the only person I respected - the best business man I know - my ally - my partner in a desperate battle ... The lowest of all desires - as my answer to the highest I've met ... Do you know what I am? I thought of it, because it should have been unthinkable. For that degrading need, which would never touch you, I have never wanted anyone but you ... I hadn't known what it was like, to want it, until I saw you for the first time. I had thought : Not I, I couldn't be broken by it ... Since then ... For two years ... With not a moments respite ... Do you know what it's like, to want it? Would you wish to hear what I thought when I looked at you ... When I lay awake at night ... When I hear your voice over a telephone wire ... When I worked, but could not drive it away? ... To bring you down to things you cant conceive - and to know that it's I who have done it. To reduce you to a body, to teach you an animal's pleasure, to see you need it, to see you asking me for it, to see your wonderful spirit dependent on the upon the obscenity of your need. To watch you as you are, as you face the world with your clean, proud strength - then to see you, in my bed, submitting to any infamous whim I may devise, to any act which I'll preform for the sole purpose of watching your dishonor and to which you'll submit for the sake of an unspeakable sensation ... I want you - and may I be damned for it!"

"Perhaps all romance is like that not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour."

"None of us can choose where we shall love..."

"I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult."

"I wore your promise on my finger for one year I'll wear your name on my heart til I die Because you were my boy, you were my only boy forever."

"I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps."

"Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?"