'Being Alive Means Knowing How to Want'

"She screamed: 'Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?'"

~ Kira Argounova, in Ayn Rand's 1936 novel We the Living

[Hat tip Harry Binswanger, from his post 'Being Alive Means Knowing How to Want']

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