Nick Yarris Quotes

This don't go here. [A major riot ensued.]

The prison is the state writ small.

When he brought it to me four years ago, Rodney King had just arrived, I was involved in the clean-up of L.A. and I guess it was part of my experience.

I went to Rikers one time to do 'Third Watch,' and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is a scary place.' We were using a section of the prison where half of it was still populated by inmates.

I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me.

I was told there would be riots in the streets, but there were no riots.

Prison opened my eyes to so many things. It was a great time. I met interesting people. I got to understand the behaviour of the police and the media. I am an observer of the human race.

I have much to say about the pain I've felt and seen inside of prison. It has been an eye-opening and harrowing experience.

I don't want to constantly be writing about terrorism and strife.

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo—obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.

I have one more problem for your computer. How long will take five hundred thousand angry Americans to climb that White House wall out there and lynch their President if he does something like that?

Part of the attraction of the riots is the looting, which seems to be almost unrestrained. I always thought that when rioting breaks out, looters must be shot. Otherwise the situation will get entirely out of hand. [Lyndon] Johnson has made all the right gestures but it is exceedingly difficult to see any end to the tension, let alone the violence which seems to be in some way part of the American way of life.

I tell inmates all the time, 'Don't complain about your grind. Do your time.'

I was arrested when I was 19 for inciting a riot.

Why do we have to have another riot?

America cannot function if we are a society fueled by riots.

The United States is Fast Becoming One of the Biggest Open-Air Prisons on Earth

It was like the first time i saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward the cadavers head, or what was left of it - floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and in the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadavers head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.

In my view, the critical questions in this era of mass incarceration are: What disturbs us? What seems contrary to expectation? Who do we really care about?

Like you, I have been disgraced about what I've seen on TV that took place in prison.

I would certainly say that. I don't want to see riots. I don't want to see problems.

Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.

Today the United States has the highest prison population in the world, over 2.1 million people. ... We lock people up at a rate that is seven to ten times that of any other democracy.

San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell.