My published works are concrete evidence that I exist..

The only thing I remember writing in prison is a couple of poems for an inmate magazine they did once a year..

The loss of a sexual life is one of the worst things about getting really old. The worst thing..

One of the principle things life has taught me is that we always have a choice. When we say we "can't," we usually mean we're just not willing to pay….

A crisis of confidence is so common that it should be considered a universal part of the adoption process..

The fact that educated white women automatically assume that we have similar backgrounds annoys me. We don't. I feel like I'm in a certain kind of dr….

I couldn't stand living in a society that admires the emperor's new clothes, when I see so clearly that he is naked..

My friends in prison were mostly women more like myself: not historical figures who I did not relate to as peers, but hookers and addicts..

We humans are in such a strange position—we are still animals whose behavior reflects that of our ancestors, yet we are unique—unlike any other anima….

Although I was simply what today would be called a "mule" - the bottom of the food chain in the drug biz - the federal system treated me from beginni….

There's a stone I had made for Luke at the top of the hill road, where the pasture opens wide and the setting sun highlights the words carved into it….

I'm actually a lowlife. On the street at fifteen and also in jail for the first time at that age, and off and on the street until my mid-twenties..

I felt compelled to blow the whistle on the penal system, under the delusion that doing so might result in some change, or at least save a few women ….

I was addicted to amphetamines at the time I got busted, but I tend to think I was on a determined, self-destruct course that had little to do with t….

My husband regarded my prison past as a dirty secret and never asked me one single question about it. But what I had experienced and witnessed was ea….

I had a naïve idea that if I could tell the story, people would be outraged and do something about conditions in the jails..

I was already a wreck when I went in, and prison nearly destroyed what little was left of me. I was worse when I came out than I was when I went in, ….

I can say now is that sneaking up on people is a major delight in my old age, but it always has been. A desire, even a need, to shock..

At eighty-one, health club-lusting is as close as I'll ever come to getting laid again..

Prison experience puts distance between me and any person who hasn't been there, done that..

People think I'm educated because I talk and write well, but the fact is I never finished high school. I've read a lot, is all..