26 Quotes by Jack Henry Abbott

I have been desperate to escape for so many years now, it is routine for me to try to escape.

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

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.

Nothing is over and done with. Nothing. Not even your malice.

To illustrate: to walk ten miles in an enclosed space of ten feet is not really movement. There are not ten miles of space, only time.

The mind does not regulate its own condition. Mental depression, for example, is a state caused by the body... William James described this relationship when he said we become sad because we shed tears: we do not shed tears because we are sad.

I would never say, to justify a lapse in principle, “I am only human” – as though that were some kind of justification for weakness, moral weakness. Flesh and blood is much, much stronger than fools believe.

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.

As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.