THOUGHTS &
NOTES

The question I hear most often is about the ten years I “lost” in prison. People see it as wasted time, but that’s a negative way of looking at life. Before I was sentenced to 27 years in a maximum-security penitentiary, I made a decision: one way or another, I would get out and I would get out better than I went in. Prison gave me something rare: time, without all the noise and distractions modern society forces us to consume. It was me, and the silence of a solitary cell.

Prison strips more than freedom; it dehumanizes. To survive, one must be a hero to oneself, for in a system of illusion, true freedom is ear.