I don't believe anyone can go through the prison experience without being changed by it. The experience becomes part of your identity forever..

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

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 ….

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….

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….

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 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..

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

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..

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

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 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..

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

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….

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….

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..

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

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, ….