66 Quotes by Piper Kerman

A little voice in my head reminded me that I might never see anything quite like this again, and that immersing myself in my current situation, experiencing it, and learning everything there as to know might be the way to live life, now and always.

The formal relationship, enforced by the institution, is that one person’s word means everything and the other’s means almost nothing; one person can command the other to do just about anything, and refusal can result in total physical restraint.

There was less bulimia and more fights than I had known as an undergrad, but the same feminine ethos was present – empathetic camaraderie and bawdy humor on good days, and histrionic dramas coupled with meddling, malicious gossip on bad days.

A federal prisoner costs at least $30,000 a year to incarcerate, and females actually cost more.

If there was one silver lining to this whole mess, it was the reminder of my family’s greatness. I had a lovely visit with my mother that.

I still don’t believe marriage is the only path to happiness or completeness as a person.

But time was a beast, a big, indolent immovable beast that wasn’t interested in my efforts at hastening it in any direction.

It was more the idea that my intimate moments – changing clothes, lying in bed, reading, crying – were all in fact public, available for observation by these strange men.

Even with this disaster I had dragged us all into, she was still proud to be my mother. It occurred to me that I had never seen my mother defeated, even when life presented difficulties and disappointments. I hoped that our resemblance extended beyond our blue eyes.