You don't have friends in here, you'll soon come to understand that. You get attached to someone, then you'll just lose them. They'll get shanked or they'll jump or they'll be taken one night.

Nobody cares. You shouldn't either.

It's incredible how much stamina you can find when you're fighting and enemy in battle, even if that enemy is just in your imagination.

This place is full of unwritten rules.

Just take it from me," Donovan said. "Stay well clear of the warden. Some here think he's the devil. I don't, I don't believe in that religious talk, but I know evil when I see it. He's something rotten they dragged from the bowels of the earth, something they patched together from darkness and filth. He'll be the death of us all, every single one of us here in Furnace. Only question is when." "I know one thing," I added. "The warden certainly brings out peoples dramatic sides." Zee and Donovan both laughed through their noses.

When you're locked up in here for life, you learn to welcome the little freedoms.

Gettting to know your characters is so much more important than plotting. Working out every detail of your story in advance, especially when you don't yet know your main characters, always seems a little too much like playing God. You're working out your characters' lives, their destiny, before they've had a chance to discover who they are and what kind of people they want to be.