Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.

The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.

I go to my Room and I drink and I smoke some cigarettes and I think about her. I drink and I smoke and I think about her and at a certain point blackness comes and my memory fails me.

I stand, walk over to him, sit down on his bed, put my arms around him, hug him. He hugs me back strong and I can feel the shame coming through his arms. I am a Criminal and he is a Judge and I am white and he is black, but at this moment none of that matters. He is a man who needs a friends and I can be his friend.

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.