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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Had I forgotten how to cry? Was that possible? In order to survive, I had long since buried my emotions.”

“If I grew up in the simple-minded belief that women were as strong and intelligent as men, it was because I came from a society that had once believed it.”