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.

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 the effect of Benzedrine.

Prison experience puts distance between me and any person who hasn't been there, done that.

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, and was not positively changed in any way.

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 price.

My published works are concrete evidence that I exist.

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

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

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 eating at me and I needed to "tell somebody."

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

Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.

Union with [True] Knowledge is ‘Principle’ [Established Truth] and union with the three [mind, speech and body] is ‘non principle’ [absence of principle].

Everything you perceive, externally, is the manifestation of some internal part of you. If it was not, it would not be present in your perceived reality.

People always knock what's new but I love the modern Internet, where cleverness is currency. Social media is a cleverness meritocracy. We're living in it.

I don't want to be one of those 40-something guys in L.A. still dating, still going out to clubs and chasing 21-year-olds. It's not a good look.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Say That! is an iron fist upside the mushy head of smooth jazz, and Grant Geissman's defiant declaration of independence.

The object of golf is to beat someone. Make sure that someone is not yourself.

I respect knowledge of the psyche. I would be a therapist if I weren't an entertainer.

All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.