Joseph Brodsky Quotes

We have real cliched ideas of what prison life is like. It is not a happy place. It's a desperate, sad situation.

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.

Prison is no hardship, really. I'm in the art room as an assistant to the tutor, and basically, I'm doing what I like.

My father, David Gilbert, is in prison in New York. He is lucky that he has a single cell, not shared with another person. His cell is about eight feet by eight feet.

Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.

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

I was gladly cuffed, shackled, loaded into the caged bus and driven through the main gate of Bare Hill Correctional Facility for what I pray to God will be forever.

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've definitely become more aware of the penal system and more aware of what life could be like inside a prison.

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

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

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

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

Prison has a universal fascination. It's a real-life horror story because, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could find themselves behind bars.

I know prisons from the inside.

When I was incarcerated at Alderson in West Virginia for a five-month term, they had a ceramics class.

My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate.

The closest thing to hell on earth is prison. It's the worst experience I've ever had in my life. Besides death.

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.

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.

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

I will say that the prison regime is rather a good one for a writer because you have plenty of time to write.

Jail is much easier on people who have nothing.

I've worked in the prison system for five years, and most of those folks in prison didn't have a direction.

Jail was terrible. It was a nightmare.