Shakespeare Saved My Life Quotes

“Why do we assume that educating a criminal is merely helping him commit more sophisticated crimes? Why can’t we assume that an education can give this person the tools to make more acceptable choices?”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. —Hamlet, act 2, scene 2”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Our second argument is “Why should we do good for bad people?” The answer is because “anything else would be bad.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“we want Shakespeare to work for other people as it’s worked for us, as a tool for use, not just a compilation of great stories.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“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.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“It is an absolute magic, and the magic has little to do with what Shakespeare has to say. You can memorize every cool quote and be as clueless as you were before reading. So it is not Shakespeare’s offering that invokes this evolution. The secret, the magic, is YOU!”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“the advantage of being a kid is the lack of perspective. Unless you can compare some other great life to this bad life, you can’t appreciate the distinction. If that’s your life, that’s your life.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“What matters is your own psychological prison—and you can break those chains. What have you got to lose? What else do you have to do?”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“It is not our conscience that torments us over our image; that is our ego tormenting us. Our conscience torments us when we behave in ways that are contrary to our values. When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of your shame, it is conscience. When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of how people think of you, it is ego. (Larry Newton)”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life

“That’s one of the problems I think a lot of people have,” he continued. “They associate their misery to the fact that they’re in prison, and it’s not that. I think a lot of my misery was me hating me, and hating me made me hate everyone else. I felt like such a punk, I felt so weak. I really was a coward. I never stood up for myself. I mean, I stood up for myself as we associate standing up for yourself—fighting and violence. But that’s not standing up for yourself. I mean standing up for myself like thinking for myself. Now, I feel more okay with myself. I’m feeling stronger in my abilities every day, and the world just opens up. You really can do anything, you can shape your life any way you want it to be. Because prison isn’t the great prison. Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Newton: but a lot of the guys here were in prison before they came here and they’ll still be in prison when they leave here…they associate their misery to the fact that they’re in prison, and it’s not that. I think a lot of my misery was me hating me, and hating me made me hate everyone else...Now, I feel more okay with myself, I’m feeling stronger in my abilities every day, and the world just opens up. You really can do anything, you can shape your life any way you want it to be. Because prison isn’t the great prison. Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life

“So every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“What a child experiences between the ages of seven and ten will determine his actions as a teenager and an adult.” I”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“When I arrived from the outside world, they never asked me about the weather. It didn’t matter in there.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“he has gone from king to prisoner, and in his thoughts goes back and forth, but seems to conclude with saying that until you have been at peace, or content, with nothing…you cannot be pleased with anything. Or that you cannot be truly happy until you have come to terms with being nothing.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“The dangerous ghetto environment I grew up in did not scare me, but bridges, elevators, even cars did. A thunderstorm would have me running into the basement, and any insect would have me running out of the house. I walked the dark streets alone at night but could not sleep without the reassuring sound of a little black-and-white TV—to the chagrin of my sister, with whom I shared a bedroom.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“As the acknowledged leader of the group by now, he threw out another challenge. In his most daring move, he insisted that in the group’s creative adaptation of the play they change the ending. In their version, with the title “To Revenge or Not to Revenge,” Hamlet should choose not to kill.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“If Shakespeare saves the life of a violent criminal, through rehabilitation, then he saves the life of potential future victims.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“It occurred to me that this was one of the few decisions that a segregated prisoner could make: to talk or not to talk. For Newton, that was the question.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Why is a prisoner’s motivation to earn a degree so that he can return to his family sooner viewed more negatively than a campus student’s motivation to earn a degree so he can make more money?”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Hoffman: “Ultimately, here’s the question Macbeth needs to face, and it’s the question we all need to face: What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul? Seriously. You gain everything but you lose your humanity. This is what happens to Macbeth. And that’s what happens to us, out of the choices we make.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“until you have been at peace, or content, with nothing…you cannot be pleased with anything. Or that you cannot be truly happy until you have come to terms with being nothing.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“After every dark night always comes a brighter day.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Hamlet is not offering you hypocritical advice against revenge; it is reminding you that the choice really is yours to make! No matter what kind of social prison we are placed in, we are all empowered to make choices that are rooted in what we want, and not what others expect of us.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“When I’m on the street, I’m not thinking about two weeks from now. I’m only thinking right now. I think for the great deal of troubled youth, it’s a common thing.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Don’t make them read Shakespeare; they’re already in prison!”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Kevin, the only prisoner in the group who was not serving a murder sentence, summed it up by saying, “What a child experiences between the ages of seven and ten will determine his actions as a teenager and an adult.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of your shame, it is conscience. When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of how people think of you, it is ego. Which of the two is more prevalent in your life?”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“...I think a lot of my misery was me hating me, and hating me made me hate everyone else. I felt like such a punk, I felt so weak. I really was a coward. I never stood up for myself. I mean, I stood up for myself as we associate standing up for yourself -- fighting and violence. But that's not standing up for yourself. I mean standing up for myself like thinking for myself. Now, I feel more ok with myself. I'm feeling stronger in my abilities every day, and the world just opens up. You really can do anything, you can shape your life any way you want it to be. Because prison isn't the great prison. Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life