"When I am questioned about myself, I am tempted to say, paraphrasing Roark: 'Don't ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.' It is the content of a person's brain, not the accidental details of his life, that determines his character. My own character is in the pages of The Fountainhead. For anyone who wishes to know me, that is essential. The specific events of my private life are of no importance whatever. I have never had any private life in the usual sense of the word. My writing is my life. ...

"My life has been 'single-tracked' or anything anyone wishes to call a life consciously devoted to a conscious purpose. I have no hobbies. I have few friends. I do not like to 'go out.' I am unbearable—to myself and to others—when I stay too long away from my work. Nothing else has ever mattered to me too much.

"The only exception to that last line is my husband, Frank O'Connor. ..."

Ayn Rand