Could the rumors of an Atlas Shrugged movie be true? Here’s to hoping so.

I just finished reading one of my favorite books, Atlas Shrugged, for the third time. Recently, I’ve started to notice that there have been some references to the current economic/government situation and this book (“going Galt”).

That’s not what got me to read the book again; I just felt like getting inspired again. From this read of the book, I marked a few bits of text and quotes that I liked for one reason or another (whether there was some meaning or just the way the sentence read), and I’ve decided to post them so I have a place to refer to them down the line.

memories are a pointless indulgence (p. 36)

…

The professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved. (p. 42)

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I like cigarettes…I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind — and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression (p. 64)

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The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d’Anconia. We are expected to become one. (p. 89)

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She did not see him often in the next two years. She never knew where he was, in what city or on what continent, the day after she had seen him. He always came to her unexpectedly — and she liked it, because it made him a continuous presence in her life, like the ray of a hidden light that could hit her at any moment. (p. 108)

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The action of naming an issue instead of evading it, was so unlike the usual behavior of all the men he knew, it was such a sudden, startling relief. (p. 139)

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He belonged in the countryside, she thought — he belonged everywhere — he was a man who belonged on earth — and she thought of the words which were more exact: he was a man to whom the earth belonged, the man at home on earth and in control. (p. 344)

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No one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or destroy. (p. 732)