In class: “Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

fountainhead-deco-100x168Dominique has gone to Clayton, a faded town in Ohio, where Roark is working on a department store (Part 3, Chapter 5).

She can’t get over the fact that Roark has to work “in some nameless hole of a place” after having built skyscrapers in New York.

“Roark, it’s the quarry again.”

He smiled. “If you wish. Only it isn’t.”

“After the Enright House? After the Cord Building?”

“I don’t think of it that way.”

“How do you think of it?”

“I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

The benevolence of that last line is wonderful. All human beings who haven’t betrayed it have a unique, irreplaceable specialness. And some go on to develop it awesomely.