The fact that educated white women automatically assume that we have similar backgrounds annoys me. We don't. I feel like I'm in a certain kind of drag.

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 Culture of clear consistent communication and connection is the foundation of a high performance team that thrives and flourishes.

Mum and Dad were very much friends and up for life. There was no anxiety for anything when I was growing up they just taught me to be me.

The Jews always complained, kvetching about false gods, and erected the biggest false God, Jehovah, in middle of western civilization.

Before you embark on it you ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path.

Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.

With you, I would walk anywhere

Nowadays, if a studio assumes that his film is bad, there is always an executive that gets more nervous than usual and thinks that if they change the music, the film will become a masterpiece.

Of course, it is well to go abroad and see the works of the old masters, but Americans... must strike out for themselves, and only by doing this will we create a great and distinctly American art.