Jack Henry Abbott > Quotes

“One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.”
― Jack Henry Abbott

“I would never say, to justify a lapse in principle, "I am only human"--as though that were some kind of justification for weakness, moral weakness. Flesh and blood is much, much stronger than fools believe.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“The only time they appear human is when you have a knife at their throats. The instant you remove it, they fall back into animality. Obscenity.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“Everyone in prison has an ideal of violence, murder. Beneath all relationships between prisoners is the ever-present fact of murder. It ultimately defines our relationship among ourselves.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“To illustrate: to walk ten miles in an enclosed space of ten feet is not really movement. There are not ten miles of space, only time.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“The mind does not regulate its own condition. Mental depression, for example, is a state caused by the body ... William James described this relationship when he said we become sad because we shed tears: we do not shed tears because we are sad.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“I cannot be critical of an infant whose only possible source of nourishment can be found in the dugs of a wolf.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“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

“...[It comes] from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain … The muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside of your mouth and your jaw locks and the pain throbs. … Your spinal column stiffens so that you can hardly move your head or your neck and sometimes your back bends like a bow and you cannot stand up. … You ache with restlessness, so you feel you have to walk, to pace. And then as soon as you start pacing, the opposite occurs to you; you must sit and rest. Back and forth, up and down you go … you cannot get relief …”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“It is funny that some of must not only get our bearings but must also know all the details of the world before we venture out into it.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“Indeed, it is almost a rule that the more simple and commonplace something is, the more difficult it is to understand it.”
― Jack Henry Abbott

“The wasteland that is your memory now comes under the absolute dictatorship of idols too terrible to mention.”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison