In a journal entry from 1998-09-01, I mentioned a quote from Peter Keating in The Fountainhead regarding the difficulty of doing what you really want. I just found it again, so here it is:
Katie, why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world -- to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things -- they're not even desires -- they're things people do to escape from desires -- because it's such a big responsibility, really to want something.