“Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this…”— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, books.google.com
“The truth is, the prison and its residents fill your thoughts, and it’s hard to remember what it’s like to be free, even after a few short months. You spend a lot of time thinking about how awful the prison is rather than envisioning your future. Nothing about the daily workings of the prison system…”— Piper Kernan, books.google.com
“To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.”— Jack Henry Abbott, books.google.com
“That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life. And I am not even conscious of how my dissolution is coming about.”— Jack Henry Abbott, books.google.com
“Holloway Prison is a very old place, and it has the disadvantages of old places which have never known enough air and sunshine. It reeks with the odours of generations of bad ventilation, and it contrives to be at once the stuffiest and the draughtiest building I have ever been in. Soon I found myse…”— Emmeline Pankhurst, books.google.com
“The closest thing to hell on earth is prison. It's the worst experience I've ever had in my life. Besides death.”— Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman, books.google.com
“After doing two years in prison, trust me, I've seen a lot of tough guys pray. They're not just praying for themselves; they're praying for their family and the people they've let down.”— Ja Rule, nydailynews.com
“Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.”— Jack Henry Abbott, books.google.com
“In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available to an average citizen in America right now.”— Merle Haggard, books.google.com
“One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.”— Oscar Wilde, books.google.com
“[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You're in a grave. You can't do anything. Everything's brought to you and you're in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when I would come out, I would entertain myself by singing, doing little mock concerts. And then when I was…”— Megan Sweeney, books.google.com
“In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.”— Eldridge Cleaver, books.google.com
“I was given a cell occupied by five other men. It was infested with vermin, and sewer rates scurried back and further over the floors of that human cesspool in such numbers that it was almost impossible for me to place my feet on the stone floor. Those rats were nearly as big as cats, and vicious.”— Eugene V. Debs, books.google.com
“There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal insensitivity of the latter.”— Jean Genet, books.google.com
“During the entire incarceration process, from arrest to detainment to prosecution to conviction to prison to parole, you realize that the ONLY people who are nice to you are other inmates. You’ll meet a lot of cold-blooded prosecutors and sadistic guards, a lot of do-gooders on the 'right' side of t…”— Jim Goad, jimgoad.net
“I know not whether Laws be right or whether Laws be wrong; all that we know who live in gaol is that the wall is strong; and that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.”— Oscar Wilde, books.google.com
“It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the fIrst stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart,…”— Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, books.google.com
“I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.”— Antonio Gramsci, books.google.com
“Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the capt…”— Mumia Abu-Jamal, books.google.com