“Everyone in prison has an ideal of violence, murder. Beneath all relationships between prisoners is the ever-present fact of murder. It ultimately defines our relationship among ourselves.”

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

“I cannot be critical of an infant whose only possible source of nourishment can be found in the dugs of a wolf.”

“The only time they appear human is when you have a knife at their throats. The instant you remove it, they fall back into animality. Obscenity.”

“I would never say, to justify a lapse in principle, "I am only human"--as though that were some kind of justification for weakness, moral weakness. Flesh and blood is much, much stronger than fools believe.”

“Between a book's covers there may be passion, bile, mayhem, or murder, but in the quiet spaces where it awaits its fate (either acceptance of indifference) all is calm.”

“The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it.”