Vladimir Mayakovsky
Russian and Soviet poet (1893-1930)
Jack Henry Abbott
American author and criminal
Jack Henry Abbottwas an American criminal and author. With a long history of criminal convictions, Abbott’s writing concerning his life and experiences was lauded by a number of well-known literary critics, including author Norman Mailer.
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About the Jack Henry Abbott
Jack Henry Abbottwas an American criminal and author. With a long history of criminal convictions, Abbott’s writing concerning his life and experiences was lauded by a number of well-known literary critics, including author Norman Mailer. Due partly to lobbying by Mailer and others on Abbott’s behalf, Abbott was released from prison in 1981 where he was serving sentences for forgery, manslaughter, and bank robbery. Abbott’s memoir In the Belly of the Beast was published with positive reviews soon after his release. Six weeks after being paroled from prison, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter outside a New York City cafe. Abbott was convicted and sent back to prison, where he killed himself in 2002.
Abbott described his life as being a “state-raised convict”, spending much of his life since age 12 in confinement in state facilities, including solitary confinement. He wrote that because of confinement with other violent offenders from whom he could not escape, he developed a subjective perspective that every encounter was potentially threatening.: 71
18 Quotes by Jack Henry Abbott
- 1.
Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life, every hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the source of this paranoia, this anger that could consume me at any moment if I lost control.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 2.
To be in prison so long, it’s difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 3.
When I’m forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it’s all I can do to refrain from attack.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 4.
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.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 5.
The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run – will not try to escape.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 6.
I find it painful and angering to look in a mirror.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 7.
There was never sufficient evidence presented at my trial to support a finding of intent to kill.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 8.
When they talk of ghosts of the dead who wander in the night with things still undone in life, they approximate my subjective experience of this life.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 9.
I escaped one time. In 1971 I was in the free world for six weeks.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 10.
As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 11.
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.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 12.
Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 13.
I have been desperate to escape for so many years now, it is routine for me to try to escape.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 14.
One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 15.
Nothing is over and done with. Nothing. Not even your malice.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 16.
That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 17.
My eyes, my brain seek out escape routes wherever I am sent.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal
- 18.
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.
Jack Henry AbbottAmerican author and criminal