Ayn Rand

“In a play I wrote in my early thirties, Ideal, the heroine, a screen star, speaks for me when she says: ‘I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.’