Tennessee Williams Quotes

You can't be sent away to prison for life and feel OK about it.

It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed." "That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.

I was gladly cuffed, shackled, loaded into the caged bus and driven through the main gate of Bare Hill Correctional Facility for what I pray to God will be forever.

I'm sorry I didn't go to jail for six months, then I know you could come to see me anytime you wanted to.

We make no apology for people who should be in prison being in prison.

I went to prison, I paid my bill.

First we pin the convict's badge on him: then we examine his case.

All of us have made mistakes in our lives, but only some of us have had to pay for the mistakes. [By going to jail.]

It's a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there.

I left the world of jail with plenty of relief but, more than anything, with a sense of unease that I still can't quite shake.

We don't live in a world where, if you commit a crime, your life's over. We as a society believe in rehabilitation. We believe in second and third chances.

I prefer a prison full of criminals than a graveyard full of innocent people.

The criminal left belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary.

PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.

I'm going to do the time and I am going to do it the right way

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.

Prison has a universal fascination. It's a real-life horror story because, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could find themselves behind bars.

I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell.

All emphasis in American prisons is on punishment, retribution, and disparagement, and almost none is on rehabilitation.

I did my time for the rape. I paid my money to Las Vegas. I paid my dues.

Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.

It may seem a hard task to condemn fellow creatures to long years of confinement in prison, but it is not so hard if they clearly deserve it.

I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality.

I'm eternally grateful to the penal system in California for saving my life.

Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished.