Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

by Laura Bates

Like war refugees, prisoners have lost everything: home, possessions, friends, and often family. For a prisoner, education has a special value as the one thing that no one can take from him.

Awareness of multiplicity of interpretation is the key to reading Shakespeare.

We are all heroes in our own tragedies.

The idea is not to give them the answers, but to make themselves question.”

And you never, ever ask anyone in prison to close his eyes. The fact that every one of them did was the strongest evidence I’ve ever had of how much they did, in fact, trust me.

we should work on developing good no matter who is on the receiving end. That is our obligation to society.