it's just that at night i've got no place to hide

notable passages thus far from the fountainhead. i felt the need to share.

"She had always hated the streets of a city. She saw the faces streaming past her, the faces made alike by fear-fear as a common denominator, fear of themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met. She could not define the nature or the reason of that fear. But she had always felt its presence. She had kept herself clean and free in a single passion - to touch nothing. She had liked facing them in the streets, she had like the impotence of their hatred, because she offered them nothing to hurt.
She was not free any longer. Each step through the streets hurt her now. She was tied to him- as he was tied to every part of the city. He was a nameless worked doing some nameless job, lost in these crowds, dependent on them, to be hurt by any one of them, to be shared by her with the whole city."

"Her evening gown was the color of glass. He had the feeling that he should be able to see the wall behind her, through her body. She seemed too fragile to exist, and that very fragility spoke of some frightening strength which held her anchored to existence with a body insufficient for reality."

"Probably. But not quite. I'm not afraid any more. But I know that the terror exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can't conceive of that kind. Listen, what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me - it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice - your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something close, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don't think I'm a coward, but I'm afraid of it."

"No. You must stop wanting anything. You must forget how important Miss Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn't. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you've found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It's just growing pains. One can't jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. A beautiful woman is usually a geeky adolescent once. All growth demands destruction."