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 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, ….

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….

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..

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….

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….

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

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..

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

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….

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

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

My published works are concrete evidence that I exist..

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..

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

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….

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