5
" You will be the first test subject, Tobias. Beatrice, however...." She smiles. " You are too injured to be of much use to me, so your execution will occur at the conclusion of this meeting." I try to hide the shudder that goes through me at the word " execution," my shoulder screaming with pain, and look up at Tobias. It's hard to blink tears back when I see the terror in Tobias's wide, dark eyes." No," says Tobias. His voice trembles, but his look stern as he shakes his head. " I would rather die." " I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice in that matter," replies Jeanine lightly.Tobias takes my face in this hands roughly and kisses me, the pressure of his lips pushing mine apart. I forget my pain and the terror of approaching death and for a moment, I am grateful that the memory of that kiss will be fresh in my mind as I meet my end. "
6
" Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction. "
― Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged
7
" I miss us too. I always have and I probably always will. Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone. But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice again and again, day in and day out, year after year,says more about love than never having a choice to make at all. "
― Emily Giffin , Love the One You're With