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.

Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent – something like an infant – deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer.

I am at this moment thirty-seven years old. Since aged twelve I have been free the sum total of nine and a half months.

Most important, you learn never to trust a man, even if he seems honest and sincere. You learn how men deceive themselves and how impossible it is to help them without injuring yourself.

This world is nothing. An illusion. Death is the release.

I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society.

At age nine I began serving long stints in juvenile detention quarters. At age twelve I was sent to the Utah State Industrial School For Boys... at age eighteen I was released as an adult.

The only serious crime I have ever committed in free society was bank robbery during the time I was a fugitive.

My eyes, my brain seek out escape routes wherever I am sent.

One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.