One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.

One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.

The part of me which wanders through my mind and never sees or feels actual objects, but which lives in and moves through my passions and my emotions, experiences this world as a horrible nightmare.

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.

I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society.

Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent - something like an infant - deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer.

I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.