Jack Henry Abbott

The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run - will not try to escape.

As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

When I'm forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it's all I can do to refrain from attack.

The part of me which wanders through my mind and never sees or feels actual objects, but which lives in and moves through my passions and my emotions, experiences this world as a horrible nightmare.

When they talk of ghosts of the dead who wander in the night with things still undone in life, they approximate my subjective experience of this life.

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

Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life, every hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the source of this paranoia, this anger that could consume me at any moment if I lost control.

There was never sufficient evidence presented at my trial to support a finding of intent to kill.

I escaped one time. In 1971 I was in the free world for six weeks.