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One does not expect to be comfortable in prison. As a matter of fact, one's mental suffering is so much greater than any common physical distress that the latter is almost forgotten.

Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men's prisons, it is said, often beg for the lash instead.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Not all psychopaths are in prison - some are in the boardroom.

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.

In this country, don't forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There's no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it's the worst kind of hell for those who love you.

Novelists in particular love to rhapsodize about the glory of the solitary mind; this is natural, because their job requires them to sit in a room by themselves for years on end. But for most of the rest of us, we think and remember socially.

Madness doesn't happen to someone alone. Very few people have experiences that are theirs alone.

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.