As always, I celebrate Ayn Rand’s birthday, February 2nd, by opening one of her novels to a random page and reading a passage. Here is the passage from The Fountainhead that I read this year (Part 1, Chapter VIII).

“… You don’t have to use the Ionic order, use the Doric. Plain pediments and simple moldings, or something like that. Get the idea? Now take this along and show me what you can do. Bennett will give you all the particulars and… What’s the mat—”

Francon’s voice cut itself off.

“Mr. Francon, please let me design it the way the Dana Building was designed.”

“Huh?”

“Let me do it. Not copy the Dana Building, but design it as Henry Cameron would have wanted it done, as I will.”

“You mean modernistic?”

“I… well, call it that.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Mr. Francon, please listen to me.” Roark’s words were like the steps of a man walking a tightwire, slow, strained, groping for the only right spot, quivering over an abyss, but precise. “I don’t blame you for the things you’re doing. I’m working for you, I’m taking your money, I have no right to express objections. But this time… this time the client is asking for it. You’re risking nothing. He wants it. Think of it, there’s a man, one man who sees and understands and wants it and has the power to build it. Are you going to fight a client for the first time in your life—and fight for what? To cheat him and to give him the same old trash, when you have so many others asking for it, and one, only one, who comes with a request like this?”

“Aren’t you forgetting yourself?” asked Francon, coldly.

“What difference would it make to you? Just let me do it my way and show it to him. Only show it to him. He’s already turned down three sketches, what if he turns down a fourth? But if he doesn’t… if he doesn’t…”

Roark had never known how to entreat and he was not doing it well; his voice was hard, toneless, revealing the effort, so that the plea became an insult to the man who was making him plead. Keating would have given a great deal to see Roark in that moment. But Francon could not appreciate the triumph he was the first ever to achieve; he recognized only the insult.

“Am I correct in gathering,” Francon asked, “that you are criticizing me and teaching me something about architecture?”

“I’m begging you,” said Roark, closing his eyes.

“If you weren’t a protégé of Mr. Keating’s, I wouldn’t bother to discuss the matter with you any further. But since you are quite obviously naïve and inexperienced, I shall point out to you that I am not in the habit of asking for the esthetic opinions of my draftsmen. You will kindly take this photograph—and I do not wish any building as Cameron might have designed it, I wish the scheme of this adapted to our site—and you will follow my instructions as to the Classic treatment of the façade.”

“I can’t do it,” said Roark, very quietly.

“What? Are you speaking to me? Are you actually saying: ‘Sorry, I can’t do it’?”

“I haven’t said ‘sorry,’ Mr. Francon.”

…