21 Quotes by Gerald Clarke

Poverty is much more than a way of life,” Jack later wrote. “It goes much farther than skin-deep. It’s no tattoo that fades with time. Nor a brand that can be put out of mind except when faced. Poverty, if you’ve known it, is you.

He was opposed to capital punishment – “institutionalized sadism,” he termed it – and in favor of prison reforms that would emphasize rehabilitation. His opinions were generally conservative, however, and he did not subscribe to the fashionable view of the sixties that criminals were victims of society.

I can tell you, from a fund of experience, that one can be taken down from the rack, closer to death than to life – and then still have the most exquisite joys ahead of one.