“Sustainability before ambition. Okal Rel.”

“When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.”

“The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.”

“Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.”

“Before God does anything, before he makes anything for us to be sustained by, God says, "More than food, more than water, more than shelter, more than other people, they are going to need me.”

“These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.”