Ilse Brandt

“I keep a strict ledger because sentiment is a tax and sloppiness is ruin. I was not born to be carried; I mean to own the furnace, the countinghouse, and eventually the paper that names who mattered. In Kesselmark, where grain is poor and steel is honest, I will measure every rival by output, margin, and the silence that follows when I outbid them.”
— self-portrait, filed at registration