People think I'm educated because I talk and write well, but the fact is I never finished high school. I've read a lot, is all.

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.

a man cannot hate unless he hates himself. Likewise one can only love another if they love themselves.

Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.

I really never thought I was that good at film. And honestly still don't. My strength is language. My background is monologues and a certain kind of Brechtian spin on theater.

I know some people who've gotten tattoos that they probably shouldn't have, like the name of somebody they were dating, and that never ends well.

I feel like it'll change after the movie [Star Wars] comes out, if it does. It's really the other way around, surprisingly, as far as Con Man goes.

I always felt that I was one of the women who helped lay the foundation for rock and roll. But I'd always been overlooked by the Hall of Fame.

I believe the only way we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven is to have the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts.

He talked to himself because there weren't many people as learned as he, and he liked to talk to learned people.

I want to investigate what scares me and worries me.

You're alive, you might as well be glad.