To Say I Love You One

This line comes from Part IV of The Fountainhead (1943), spoken by Howard Roark. Rand used it to argue that the capacity to love another person presupposes a strong, defined sense of self: without the "I" — a clear individual identity and self-respect — love becomes an empty or even destructive dependency rather than a genuine valuing of another. The idea is central to her Objectivist ethics, in which romantic love is regarded as a response to one's highest values embodied in another person.