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That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.

When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like.

Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.

Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open.

I've never stabbed, hurt, killed, stolen, anything, but I went to jail for a year. What is that? My pastor said to me the fact that I'm not living under a bridge as a crazy woman, talking to myself, is amazing.

And I did wonder - because it's now three years ago since I left prison - whether there would come a time when I would forget it, or it would be in the past as anything else might be - no, it's there every day of my life.

You're in a situation where you have limited education opportunities, you don't have any money, you can't get a job; what are you going to do? You're going to go back to this criminal network that you actually made while you were in prison.

One of the things about jail that's weird is that you're sent to a place where you're supposed to sit there and think about your actions and their consequences and why you're there. And I think now, it turns more into - the minute you go there, it's just survival.