Hill Harper Quotes

You can see how prison could affect some of the other guys that are there for longer than a year. Because eventually, it starts to eat away at you. And if you don't work at yourself mentally or physically or spiritually, eventually you're going to be swallowed up by circumstance.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

When you're in prison, and we're left to our own devices, you're stripped of everything, and you really get to see who these people are, the good and the bad.

I spent my first three weeks there on a wing with 21 murderers. I met some very evil people there but also some men who'd had no upbringing, no chance in life.

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.

People in general have a preconceived idea of what prison is, from seeing documentaries or whatever.

And I did wonder - because it's now three years ago since I left prison - whether there would come a time when I would forget it, or it would be in the past as anything else might be - no, it's there every day of my life.

Jail is much easier on people who have nothing.

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 grew up in Huntsville, which is a main prison town. It's crazy. The conditions are so bad in prison, often, for the inmates.

I have spent a lot of time listening to people who are serving life sentences and getting to know them and the circumstances of their lives. I have never met anyone serving a long prison sentence who had anything close to what I could call a childhood; instead, the upbringings always - always - involve extreme situations of poverty and abuse.

I did a lot of research on what solitary confinement does to you, how you become acclimated to being surrounded by people again after being by yourself for such a long time. It's really a horrific thing. It's definitely worth considering it as torture. We're just not meant to be in solitary confinement.

I spent five years of my youth in prison - some very bad prisons.

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

No one cares about you when you're in jail.

I don't believe that man was built to be put in a 5-by-7 for 30 years and have his sanity when he comes out if he doesn't find something to escape.

It was very cold in jail. But inmates were good. They shared their stories with me.

We all know what this business can do to you... you end up walking on your heels.

Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.

I get a lot of letters from prisoners. They say things you can't imagine.

As soon as I ended up being incarcerated, I said, you know, this is not the life for me.

I know prisons from the inside.

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.

There seem to be many causes of depression. One cause is profound loss, grief. Economic hardship we know is linked to depression. We don't have a full picture.

People endure what they endure and they deal with it. It may corrupt them. It may lead them into all sorts of compensatory excesses.