Ja Rule Quotes

When you go to prison, you don't feel like a superstar. It really humbles you as a person.

I went down to the prison in Menard, thinking we were the vanguard, but down there, I got down on my knees and listened and learned from the people.

To be stripped of your freedom, to be stripped of your dignity and the respect you once had, to lose it all and then see life pass you by while you're sitting inside a prison cell, to wake up one day and get it all back - it's a very humbling feeling.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.

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

I lost myself in the process and I realized how much I had identified myself with Maria Shriver, newswoman. When that was gone, I had to really sit back and go, 'Well, actually, who am I today?'

I appreciate the idea that anybody would think of me as a star. But I'm really not career oriented in the sense that I want to be a star. It's not in me. It's not what I do. In fact, I'm amazed that I've even gotten this far.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

For me, getting comfortable with being famous was hard - that whole side of it, the loss of anonymity, the loss of privacy. Giving up that part of your life and not having control of it.

Going to prison is like dying with your eyes open.

One day between takes on the 'Oz' set, I went into one of the cells and laid down and dozed off. When I woke up, I thought I was back in a federal pen. But I did my time, and today no one is more of a free man than Chuck Zito.

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.

It was really tough being in jail. It doesn't get much lower. You're in a filthy room. The food is terrible, and you're surrounded by people who have done all types of crazy crimes. You have nothing that belongs to you, not even your own underwear. It's just terrible.

One of the frustrations of prison life, which is also one of its intended consequences, is that the prisoner is made ineffective. He is unable to be of much use. The aim is to render him powerless.

At the age of 46, in my sixth prison term, it was the second prison I was in - California Rehabilitation Center. The California Civil Education program kind of opened up all of the experiences that that I had dealt with in my life, that I had experienced.

I didn't mind the 23 hours a day solitary confinement for the majority of the time, because after the first few years in prison, when I stopped being angry and started to like myself and understand myself, it was OK. I still enjoy my own company sometimes.

I witnessed other inmates' time run out, and I'd be lying if I said you don't ask yourself, 'Wow, is that going to happen to me?'

My life has been charmed in the sense that I've met some extraordinary people. But at the end of the day, when you go home and you go to bed, and if you're on your own, you never think of yourself in that way. I'm sure not even people like Angelina Jolie think like that.

Prison killed me. It destroyed me.

It's weird when you stop being a person to a lot of folks and just become a weird talking point. It's like you become a meme, and you're not a person anymore, and people don't mind stealing your life.

Prison gives you time to reflect.

One of the things about incarceration is that you're deprived. You lose all of your identity, and then its given back one day, and you're ill-equipped to actually embrace it and work it.

In prison, you have to forget about the world on the outside. You have no Internet, no communications, and you're cut off from the whole world. Everything is given to you. You have shelter; you have food, a shower, water. You don't need to spend a dime. You don't have to worry about bills.

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.