66 Quotes by Piper Kerman

Someone going home was a victory for us all. I.

Even when my clothes were taken away and replaced by prison khakis, I would have scoffed at the idea that the “War on Drugs” was anything but a joke. I would have argued that the government’s drug laws were at best proven ineffectual every day and at worst were misguidedly focused on supply rather than demand, randomly conceived and unevenly and unfairly enforced based on race and class, and thus intellectually and morally bankrupt.

Lack of empathy lies at the heart of every crime – certainly my own – yet empathy is the key to bringing a former prisoner back into the fold of society.

I opened my mouth, mad enough to spit, and said loudly, “I don’t eat iceberg lettuce!” Really? I asked myself. That’s what you’re going to throw down with? “I don’t care what you eat, just don’t be pickin’ in there!

Personally, I thought that one could thank the Lord at a lower volume and perhaps with less self-congratulation.

In my travels I had encountered all kinds of people whose dignity seemed to have a price – widely variable – and I thought that next time I had better set my price higher than anyone would pay.

According to the CDC, cigarettes kill over 435,000 people a year in the United States. Most of us in Danbury were locked away for trading in illegal drugs. The annual death toll of illegal drug addicts, according to the same government study? Seventeen thousand. Heroin.

I understood that faith could help people see beyond themselves, not into the abyss but into the street, into the mix, to offer what was best about themselves to others.

D. H. Lawrence used to observe on our national character: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.