"To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there. So long, your fantasies of the free world are no longer easily distinguishable from what you 'know' the free world is really like. So long, that being free is exactly identical to a free man's dreams of heaven." (State-Raised Convict, page 3)

"I learned a little secret in this period. A convict over sixty years old passed it on to me: cockroaches are a source of protein. Mash the day's catch all together in a piece of bread and swallow it like a big pill." (Varieties of Punishment, page 32)

"Time descends in your cell like the lid of a coffin in which you lie and watch it as it slowly closes over you. When you neither move nor think in your cell, you are awash in pure nothingness." (The Hole: Solitary Confinement...