AYN RAND ping
The social worker seized her arm. "It's a disgrace to come to such a state . . . If you society girls had something to do besides indulging your desires and chasing pleasures, you wouldn't be wandering drunk as a tramp, at this hour of the night . . . if you stopped living for your own enjoyment, stopped thinking of yourself and found some higher--"
Then the girl screamed--and the scream went beating against the blank walls of the street as in a chamber of torture, an animal scream of terror. She tore her arm loose and sprang back, then screamed in articulate sounds:
"No! No! Not your kind of world!"
Then she ran, ran by the sudden propulsion of a burst of power, the power of a creature running for its life, she ran straight down the street that ended at the river--and in a single streak of speed, with no break, no moment of doubt, with full consciousness of acting in self-preservation, she kept running till the parapet barred her way and, not stopping, went over into space.
The Death of Cherryl Taggart, AS, hardcover p. 907-908
Thanks very much for the ping; post. Great thread. Thanks to all posters. VDH at his finest.