“Now take a man who is sensitive, cultured, and of delicate conscience. What he feels kills him more surely than the material punishment. The judgement which he himself pronounces on his crime is more pitiless than that of the most severe tribunal, the most Draconian law. He lives side by side with another convict, who has not once during all his time in prison reflected on the murder he is expiating. He may even consider himself innocent. Are there not also poor devils who commit crimes in order to be sent to hard labour, and thus escape from a freedom which is much more painful than confinement?”
― The House of the Dead
― The House of the Dead
“Nevertheless, vanity and conceit are defects from which scarcely any convict is exempt.”
― The House of the Dead
― The House of the Dead
“Money is a kind of freedom that can be felt and heard; it is an inestimable treasure for a man entirely deprived of true liberty.”
―
―
“The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'
Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”
― Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”
― Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
“Why is it that a convict never saves his money? Well, not only is it difficult for him to keep it, but prison life is so miserable that a man, of his very nature, thirsts for freedom of action. His position in society makes him so irregular a being that the idea of swallowing up his capital in orgies, of intoxicating himself with revelry, seems to him quite natural if only he can procure himself one moment's forgetfulness.”
― The House of the Dead
― The House of the Dead
Miguel’s 2024 Year in Books
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