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"I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison."
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"Suddenly finding myself imprisoned in the ruins of the fortresses I created, I realize that that which I built to protect me has now become a labyrinth that is set to destroy me. And laying spent in the rubble, I finally realize that there is only one fortress and I cannot create it because there is only one God."

"Has every line inside of you been crossed? Is there anything left unviolated? Are you so comfortable with your imprisonment you feel free?"

"Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like."

"I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison."
Explore more quotes by Jack Henry Abbott


"The part of me which wanders through my mind and never sees or feels actual objects, but which lives in and moves through my passions and my emotions, experiences this world as a horrible nightmare."


"There was never sufficient evidence presented at my trial to support a finding of intent to kill."


"When I'm forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it's all I can do to refrain from attack."


"Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life, every hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the source of this paranoia, this anger that could consume me at any moment if I lost control."


"Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent - something like an infant - deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer."


"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."
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