Marching Powder Quotes

“Doing time is a real test of friendship. None of my old friends passed that test. Maybe none of them had even noticed that I was missing. To me, that made it even more special that people I had never met before came to visit me and did stick by me. Most of the travellers who had visited me were just passing through La Paz and couldn’t visit more than once or twice. However, many of them stayed in contact by letters and email. I glued the postcards they sent me from all over the world onto my wall. I received mail from the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, England, Israel, Turkey and Japan. Whenever I felt sad, I would read what the tourists had written to me, and I would soon feel better again. Even though I only met many of these people once, I knew that they were real friends. You know how? I had nothing to give them. I couldn’t give them money, I couldn’t give them status, I couldn’t take them to fancy places and buy drinks for them. All I had were my stories and who I was, and that was enough for them to want to stay in contact. For the first time in my life, that was enough.”
― Thomas McFadden, Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail

“You have fallen badly, señor gringo. Bribery is a very serious crime in this country. You will have to pay.”
― Rusty Young, Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail

“Hope is the last thing to die. It keeps us going through the darkest times,”
― Rusty Young, Marching Powder

“San Pedro prison, apart from being a social microcosm, is also a microeconomy that operates under basic capitalist principles. In fact, it’s probably more efficient than the whole Bolivian national economy. And more democratic, too, but I’ll explain the prison election system to you another day.”
― Rusty Young, Marching Powder: A True Story of a British Drug Smuggler In a Bolivian Jail