Prisoners Quotes

“If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, My Point... And I Do Have One

“We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.”
― Khalil Gibran

“Prison is like high school with knives.”
― Raegan Butcher

“If the prisoner is beaten, it is an arrogant expression of fear.”
― Ghassan Kanafani, All that's Left to You: A Novella and Other Stories

“And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.”
― James Clavell, King Rat

“It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Handcuffs weigh much more than gravestones.

(from "Gratitude")”
― Visar Zhiti, The Condemned Apple: Selected Poetry

“The longer we confine ourselves to a place the more it imprisons us.”
― Sarah Noffke, Defects

“I was always mortified.Didn't they know they were tying thier mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Instead of making prisoners out of our students, we ought to make students out of our prisoners.”
― Paul W. Silver, The Dangerous Dream

“IN OUR CELLS

They keep us in our cells
For a long time...

And, if we get out,
We lug them with us on our shoulders,
Like a porter with a chest of goods.”
― Visar Zhiti, The Condemned Apple: Selected Poetry

“A—ris—ta?” Degan asked, sounding horse. “What is it?”
“A rat bit me,” she said, once again shocked by her own rasping voice.
“Jasper does that if—” Gaunt coughed and hacked. After a moment, he
spoke again. “If he thinks you’re dead or too weak to fight.”
“Jasper?”
“I call him that, but I’ve also named the stones in my cell.”
“I only counted mine,” Arista said.
“Two hundred and thirty-four,” Degan replied instantly.
“I have two hundred and twenty-eight.”
“Did you count the cracked ones as two?”
“No.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, Heir of Novron

“rip the prisons
open
put the
convicts
on
television”
― Norman Mailer, Deaths For The Ladies

“Ako nisam kriv, onda su pogriješili, zatvorili su nedužna čovjeka. Ako me puste, priznaće svoju grešku, a to nije ni lako ni korisno. Niko pametan ne može od njih tražiti da rade protiv sebe. Zahtjev bi bio nestvaran, i smiješan. Onda ja moram biti kriv. A kako da me puste ako sam kriv? Razumiješ li? Ne treba da budemo suviše nepravedni. Svako polazi sa svoga stanovišta i smatramo da je u redu kad tako mi činimo, ali kad to oni čine, onda nam smeta. Priznaćeš da je to nedosljedno.”
― Meša Selimović, Death and the Dervish

“Murderers — serving life sentences — were caring for their dying fellow inmates. Washing their bed-sore covered bodies, changing their diapers, holding their hands while they took their last breath. It was the other side of death, not the one at the end of a sudden muzzle flash, but the slow and wrenching kind, leaving plenty of time for hard reflection.”
― Lisa R. Cohen

“Sometimes I doubt that anyone with a philosophical turn of mind is fit to judge anyone. He never comprehends the concept of guilt.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“I was just a shell of the person I used to be-hard on the outside and empty on the inside. Those marks were my own personal tombstonr, reminding me every day that I was just as dead as the one I'd murdered.”
― Tabatha Vargo, Slammer

“Prisoners are often denied their basic human rights by their captors.”
― Steven Magee

“Think! We are prisoners and shall always be.
Fortune has given us this adversity,
Some wicked planetary dispensation,
Some Saturn’s trick or evil constellation
Has given us this, and Heaven, though we had sworn
The contrary, so stood when we were born.
We must endure it, that’s the long and short”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight's Tale

“Who would sleep with the lights on 24 hours a day?”
― Steven Magee

“Prisoners often sleep with the lights on 24 hours a day.”
― Steven Magee

“Prisoners are often kept permanently indoors.”
― Steven Magee

“Light deficiency appears prevalent in prisoners.”
― Steven Magee

“Denial of drinking water by police officers to dehydrated prisoners is a human rights abuse.”
― Steven Magee

“Police officers are known to put their prisoners into overheated police cars to dehydrate and heat them up.”
― Steven Magee

“Since 1865, when the [Thirteenth] Amendment was passed, Black men were getting charged, set up, arrested, and convicted for the pettiest of offenses--like child support. They were getting harsher punishments and longer sentences than their white counterparts. That way, the cotton could still get picked and the tobacco could still get plucked. The Confederate way of making money could still survive despite the abolishment of slavery.”
― Amy Watkins

“I read in secret, all the time. I read in the toilets. I read in the middle of the night. I read as if books could loosen the noose tightening around my throat. I read to understand that there is somewhere else. A dimension where possibilities shimmer.”
― Ananda Devi, Eve out of Her Ruins

“We once faced an overflow of mental hospitals... now, with their closure, we’re facing an overflow of prisons.”
― Deanna L. Lawlis

“Roughly halfway across the frozen river, the column of prisoners was halted by a massive snowdrift blocking their path. It proved too dense to break through in a single charge.
“Why are you standing there staring? Move! Help the men in front!” a guard barked.
The prisoners crowded forward and began clearing the obstacle together, clawing and kicking at the packed snow with desperate urgency.
In their haste, they failed to consider that the ice had not yet thickened sufficiently after the previous night’s freeze. Under the concentrated weight of so many bodies in one place, the thin crust of ice suddenly gave way. The entire vanguard plunged into the freezing water.
Those following behind recoiled in terror and collided with the prisoners at the rear. As they fell, the ice shattered beneath them as well, and they too were swallowed by the treacherous water. The more fortunate inmates, farther from the gaping hole in the ice, scattered in panic. Frightened guards fired warning shots into the air, shouting frantically to restore order.
An instant later, the icy slurry struck Peter’s body like a thousand knives. Screams, splashing water, cracking ice, and frantic bodies thrashing in the racing current merged into a single nightmare of chaos.
Several of the men who had fallen into the river could not swim. One was quickly seized by the current and dragged beneath the ice. Others, stricken by panic, clutched at whoever was near them. Peter found himself locked in the iron grip of a terrified Turkmen prisoner who had never in his life seen a body of water large enough to swim in. Together, they began to sink beneath the ice.
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Three


Context note:
Set in 1941 during the chaotic early months of World War II, this scene depicts the forced transfer of prisoners within the Soviet Gulag system. As Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, thousands of inmates were marched or transported across vast distances under brutal conditions. Many perished not in battle, but during these desperate evacuations—victims of cold, exhaustion, panic, and the indifference of a repressive state.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга третя. Несправджені сподівання.: Все буде Голодомор.

“Prisoners - they have nothing to give, except suffering. Which is exactly what the guards are after: the pleasure of torment; the scratching of their itches for power”
― Janet Turpin Myers, The Last Year of Confusion