As a general rule, I don’t think that The Hours by Michael Cunningham has much in common with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. But, the following quotes have a similar feel and message.
From Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart contemplating while she is waiting for Hank Rearden:
The hours ahead, like all her nights with him, would be added, she thought, to the savings account of one’s life where moments of time are stored in the pride of having been lived. The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one’s life. (343)
From The Hours, Clarissa’s thoughts towards the end of the book:
There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. (225)
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