Objective(4)

"Can’t you be human for once in your life?"
"What?"
"Human! Simple. Natural."
"But I am."
"Can’t you ever relax?"
Roark smiled, because he was sitting on the window sill, leaning sloppily
against the wall, his long legs hanging loosely, the cigarette held without
pressure between limp fingers.
"That’s not what I mean!" said Keating. "Why can’t you go out for a drink with
me?"
"What for?"
"Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious?
Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You’re so
serious, so old. Everything’s important with you, everything’s great,
significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can’t you ever
be comfortable--and unimportant?"
"No."
"Don’t you get tired of the heroic?"
"What’s heroic about me?"
"Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. It’s not what you do. It’s what you make
people feel around you."
"What?"
"The un-normal. The strain. When I’m with you--it’s always like a choice.
72
Between you--and the rest of the world. I don’t want that kind of a choice. I
don’t want to be an outsider. I want to belong. There’s so much in the world
that’s simple and pleasant. It’s not all fighting and renunciation. It is--with
you."
"What have I ever renounced?"
"Oh, you’ll never renounce anything! You’d walk over corpses for what you want.
But it’s what you’ve renounced by never wanting it."
"That’s because you can’t want both."
"Both what?"
"Look, Peter. I’ve never told you any of those things about me. What makes you
see them? I’ve never asked you to make a choice between me and anything else.
What makes you feel that there is a choice involved? What makes you
uncomfortable when you feel that--since you’re so sure I’m wrong?"
"I...I don’t know." He added: "I don’t know what you’re talking about." And then
he asked suddenly:
"Howard, why do you hate me?"
"I don’t hate you."
"Well, that’s it! Why don’t you hate me at least?"
"Why should I?"
"Just to give me something. I know you can’t like me. You can’t like anybody. So
it would be kinder to acknowledge people’s existence by hating them."
"I’m not kind, Peter."
And as Keating found nothing to say, Roark added:
"Go home, Peter. You got what you wanted. Let it go at that. See you Monday."

from the book Fountainhead by Ayne Rand