“I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.”

“As I write down my thought it sometimes escapes me, but that reminds me of my weakness, which I am always forgetting, and teaches me as much as my forgotten thought, for I care only about knowing that I am nothing.”

“I'm Writing my stoy. But i'm also plotting my escape from this prison cell.This is my plan.I will do it with words.I will write them by day.I will write them by night.I will write them on the walls,the stalls, the halls.I will write them in big bold inkon posters i hang on the concrete blocks.I will write them on little pieces of paperI stuff on the mattress and the pillow.I will write them with fingersbent and cramped from use.I will write them in bloodif i have to,but only my own.And i will keep writing them,again, and again, and again,until i fill this prison cell so full of words,that the bars bend and buckle and burstbecause they cannot contain themAnd then I will be free.”

“I am aware that the battle I am fighting is a petty one, but I am also aware that in order to win that which is great, you must first win that which is small.”

“From the place by the railing at the edge of the tracks on the summer evening I return across the city to my own room. I am vividly aware of my own life that escaped the winter on the boat. How many such lives I have lived. Then I only made a dollar and a half a day and now I sometimes make more than that in a few minutes. How wonderful to be able to write words. ... Again I begin the endless game of reconstructing my own life, jerking it out of the shell that dies, striving to breathe into it beauty and meaning. ... I wonder why my life, why all lives, are not more beautiful.”

“It is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself. But if he escapes, he cannot rebuild, and if he rebuilds, he cannot escape.”