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. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
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. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
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 Read Quote
When I’m forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it’s all I can do to refrain from attack. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run – will not try to escape. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
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. Jack Henry Abbott Read Quote
