I write - and read - for the sake of the story... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“writing is serious business and not for any stray bastard that wants to try it.” — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Even in dialogue, your own style rules your selection. Do not give yourself a blank check of this kind: 'I'll merely reproduce… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
A story is an end in itself. It is not written to teach, sell, explain or destroy anything. It is not written… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“If creative fiction writing is a process of translating an abstraction into the concrete, there are three possible grades of such writing:… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
A reader has to be concerned only with the end result; unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams; if a carnivorous… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds.… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope.” — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
A “collective” mind does not exist. It is merely the sum of endless numbers of individual minds. If we have an endless number of… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Lobbying' is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“She moved her hand and let it rest against his. He did not withdraw his fingers and he did not pretend indifference. She bent… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“There was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
