Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.

Next quotes

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life, every hour and minute of every day, and

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  Nothing is over and done with. Nothing. Not even your malice.

• Jack Henry Abbott:

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

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent - something like an infant - deep inside

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  When they talk of ghosts of the dead who wander in the night with things still undone in life, they

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  I have been desperate to escape for so many years now, it is routine for me to try to escape.

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  I escaped one time. In 1971 I was in the free world for six weeks.

• Jack Henry Abbott:

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

• Jack Henry Abbott:

  I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of