“People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.”

Russian-American writer and philosopher

Ayn Rand, born Alice O'Connor, was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing Objectivism, the philosophical system she named. Her work brought together storytelling and philosophy, and she became closely associated with a body of ideas that she presented as Objectivism. Her writing is known for combining fiction with arguments about reason, individualism, and the role of philosophy in life.