Being In Jail Quotes & Sayings

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. — Charles Dickens

The reason why she had chosen journalism was because of those who had done so before her. Stalwart women and men who reported stories in the days before the Internet. Before it was fashionable to learn Mass Communication. A long time before being a TV reporter and calling up your family to see your face beamed to their homes was an in thing. They were those who had left their families behind as they pursued the truth, opting to go to jail when the government hounded them to reveal their sources. Men and women that would rather quit than write editorials the management wanted them to write. Journalists who never wrote a word they would have to disown. Journalists who took their last breath as they wrote an article was true to what they believed in. They would never sit down and take stock of the stories they had covered and written saying, So what if twenty of these are non-stories, I at least had five I believed in. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

Two boys who looked to be seven years old had been picked up while sweeping floors in a cheap hotel. They reminded Abdul of his little brothers, and he felt emotional being around them. He couldn't see why the state had taken them from their parents. Being so poor that you had to work so young seemed like punishment enough.

Abdul had kept to himself in his first days at Dongri, aware of his inadequacy in the conversational arts, but the incarceration of the seven-year-olds inflamed him. "What's the use, keeping them here?" he blurted out one day. "You see their faces? So much enthusiasm for life, they are going to break the walls of this jail. The government people should let them work, let them be free. — Katherine Boo

I'd be in my hotel room, smoking too much, drinking, going to clubs, just being numb. That was being in jail to me. I wasn't happy at all on the streets. That was the addict speaking. — Tupac Shakur

Well apparently nothing as of December 13, 1978. There was 20 trained police officers came to the house, with a warrant..searched the house, and they went down in the crawlspace ... while I was being held at the jail in Des Plaines, Illinois. They never took anything from the crawlspace other than bringing up lime into the house. There also were no mounds of dirt like what is mentioned in books. — John Wayne Gacy

I'll tell you what's real. Real is that I was in jail for the past year, rooming with drug dealers and eating crap food your dog wouldn't touch. Real is not being able to wear your own frickin' underwear and showering with twenty-five other dicks every day while guards watch. Real is my next-door neighbor who walks like she's balancing on stilts because her leg is so fucked up from the accident. Brian, your perception of reality is totally off. — Simone Elkeles

If you haven't said 'I love you' to someone today, do it. You won't always be happy, but you should try to be. Don't be too afraid of germs. Those people have no fun. Remember to look around sometimes. You might see something you haven't seen before or at the very least avoid being hit by a flying object. Speaking of flying objects, don't spend your life looking for extraterrestrial life, unless you work for NASA. Remember that you always have to cooperate with someone. Life is an endless negotiation. Play fair. Stay out of jail. Don't live in the past. Eat breakfast. It really is the most important meal of the day. Try to make new friends, even when you think you're too old to do that ... And finally, remember this 'Yes' is always a better work than 'no'. Unless, of course, someone has just asked you to commit a felony. — Lisa Lutz

If Barack Obama had come up in a time when the drug war was being waged as intensely as it is now, we probably would never have heard of him. A single arrest could have precluded student loans, resulted in jail time, and completely ruined his life, posing a far greater threat to him than the drugs themselves did, including the risk of addiction to marijuana or cocaine. — Carl Hart

Sending Paris Hilton to jail for being the most loathed celeprosy lesion in the history of the species seems like a happening idea at first - forty-five days at Century Regional Detention Center is so the new thirty days at Promises Malibu! But it sets a dangerous precedent to jail celebs just because someone hates them. — Rob Sheffield

'Blind Curve,' the book I'm working on now, sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story, the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did. — Andrew Gross

Being in jail, it's humbled me in a way I never imagined. — Foxy Brown

Our nation sought to rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and personhood of those who for so long had been silenced, had been turned into anonymous, marginalized ones. Now they would be able to tell their stories, they would remember, and in remembering would be acknowledged to be persons with an inalienable personhood. Our country's negotiators rejected the two extremes and opted for a "third way," a compromise between the extreme of Nuremberg trials and blanket amnesty or national amnesia. And that third way was granting amnesty to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure relating to the crime for which amnesty was being sought. It was the carrot of possible freedom in exchange for truth and the stick was, for those already in jail, the prospect of lengthy prison sentences and, for those still free, the probability of arrest and prosecution and imprisonment. The option South Africa chose raises — Desmond Tutu

What really resonated with my students, I think, is that most of the writers we worked with were journalists, and when they saw journalists simply raising questions and being put in jail for that, it did freak them out a little bit. — Adam Braver

Being that I went to jail and came back, I went through a whole new experience in life. I went from being at the top to back down at the bottom again. In jail, you get stripped of your freedom and everything, so I experienced different things, learned more. — Meek Mill

'The Red' is the first book in a trilogy that gained a big following as a self-published e-book, and is now out in paper from Saga. It introduces us to reluctant hero Shelley, a former anti-war activist who chooses to join the military rather than serve jail time after being arrested at a protest. — Annalee Newitz

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned ... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company. — Samuel Johnson

They were complicated years. The order of the world in which we had grown up was dissolving. The old skills resulting from long study and knowledge of the correct political line suddenly seemed senseless. Anarchist, Marxist, Gramscian, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, worker were quickly becoming obsolete labels or, worse, a mark of brutality. The exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere. Meanwhile, by means legal and illegal, all the accounts that remained open in the state and in the revolutionary organizations were being closed with a heavy hand. One might easily end up murdered or in jail, and among the common people a stampede had begun. — Elena Ferrante

What every American should know is that we have more people in jail today than any other country on Earth, more than China. We have some 2.2 million people in jail. What that means is that a lot of lives are being destroyed. — Bernie Sanders

For even now the drums were in our blood, we sat forward almost hearing them across the bay, and the van raced on through the streets so that the driver could hustle back for another load of pleasure-seekers, so bent on pleasure they were driving right through Happiness, it seemed, a quieter brand of existence that flourished under these green elms. We kept driving right through all the dappled domesticity, like prisoners, indeed, being moved from jail to jail imprisoned in our own sophistication. — Andrew Holleran

Time was being served behind the walls of Newgate jail, and wasted by philosophers in cafes on the Strand; it was lost by those who wished the past were present, and loathed by those who wished the present past. — Sarah Perry

The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say. — Criss Jami

Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party. — Jane Addams

The U.S. obviously has all the evidence they need to prosecute bankers. They just need to search their own spy database and then there you go - 1,000 bankers in jail, a trillion dollars in fines. But it doesn't happen. Instead, the spy network is being used to fight a copyright case. They used Prism to spy on me. — Kim Dotcom

Isn't that the whole idea?' I asked. 'It's supposed to stop them from being criminals!' She shook her head. 'That's not what I mean. A lot of people make bad mistakes. But being in jail can make them feel like a mistake is all they are. Like they aren't even people anymore. — Rebecca Stead

Being holed up in here does wonders for making the brain do what it was made for. — James Dashner

There, in jail, we dreamed of just being outside, free, but when I came out, I discovered that I missed the solidarity we had in jail, the sense of purpose, the way we tried to share memories and food. She said, More than anything else, I miss the hope. In jail, we had the hope that we might get out, go to college, have fun, go to the movies. — Azar Nafisi

In that darkness they exchanged rumors: A dozen victims had been drawn and quartered. John Brown had eaten their flesh. Slaves were rising up everywhere, holding secret meetings in an old cemetery at the edge of town. Arden had heard that the first sign of the uprising would be the discovery of all the dogs in Winchester piled in a heap at the edge of town, their throats cut. even families like the Beales who owned no slaves would not be spared. revenge would trade color for color; whites would die for no other crime than being white. At that very moment, John Brown's disciples were trying to free him from jail before his execution. — Kathy Hepinstall

AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards match, with the opposing goalkeeper being handcuffed and dragged away to jail by police. — David Bennun

At Snortin' Reformatory, a notorious Washington, D.C. jail located in the northern Virginia suburbs, The Afro-Anarchists were being thrown into a cell. It was a situation that the three of them, like many young black males in the D.C. area, had long ago come to expect as a rite of passage.
As the door slammed shut behind them, Bucktooth spoke. "Man, Phosphate, they didn't read us our rights or nothin'."
"Yeah, Phos," Fontaine chimed in, "I didn't think they had to beat us, neither. And whoever heard of being charged with singing too loud and off-key in a public establishment? I don't believe there is no kind of law for that shit. — Donald Jeffries

Roughly a month into my stay in jail, I began the first of twelve letters. The choice of titles had much to do with my reason (or circumstances) for being incarcerated: I was a parent of a past-marriage; and though the courts had dissolved the marriage long ago, the matter of parenting was still being debated (by me) - but prohibited by the courts. I had to accept the possibility that my days as a father might be behind me while remaining dutiful to the possibility that, at anytime, circumstances could change. On the one hand, I am a former-father, but on the other hand, I cannot be anything but a father to my children - at any age. — H. Kirk Rainer

If he's a poet, why's he in jail?" demanded a suspicious voice.
Madam Chairwoman shrugged velvet shoulders.
"Perhaps he writes free verse," she suggested cunningly.
A stir of approval answered her. Mice are all for people being free, so that they too can be freed form their eternal task of cheering prisoners--so that they can stay snug at home, nibbling the family cheese, instead of sleeping out in damp straw on a diet of stale bread. — Margery Sharp

One advantage to being a despised species is that you have freedom, freedom to be any crazy thing you want. If you listen to a group of housewives talk, you'll hear a lot of nonsense, some of it really crazy. This comes, I think, from being alone so much, and pursuing your own odd train of thought without impediment, which some call discipline. The result is craziness, but also brilliance. Ordinary women come out with the damnedest truth. You ignore them at your own risk. And they are permitted to go on making wild statements without being put in one kind of jail or another (some of them, anyway) because everyone knows they're crazy and powerless too. If a woman is religious or earthy, passive or wildly assertive, loving or hating, she doesn't get much more flak than if she isn't: her choices lie between being castigated as a ball and chain or as a whore. — Marilyn French

Indian misery is when somebody takes your land.
Indian misery is when somebody kills your friends.
Indian misery is when your people turn against you.
Indian misery is being slaves to people.
Indian misery is being locked up in jail.
Indian misery is people killing your food for money.
Indian misery is fighting. Indian misery is no peace.
Indian misery is when you get killed. Indian misery is if you lose the fight.

(Andrew Herman, student) — Timothy P. McLaughlin

She was fifteen years old, going on thirty-five, Doc, and she told me she was eighteen, she was very willing, I practically had to take to sewing my pants shut. Between you and me, uh, she might have been fifteen, but when you get that little red beaver right up there in front of you, I don't think it's crazy at all and I don't think you do either. No man alive could resist that, and that's why I got into jail to begin with. And now they're telling me I'm crazy over here because I don't sit there like a goddamn vegetable. Don't make a bit of sense to me. If that's what being crazy is, then I'm senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, wacko. But no more, no less, that's it. — Ken Kesey

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. — Paul Beatty

If a man ... .who's playing in front of the public, is being well paid, and he doesn't dedicate himself to the job, I'd be hard on him. If I could I would put him in jail, out of the road of society. Because he's a menace — Bill Shankly

Oh god, what now? Are you in jail? Being held by the IRA? Stuck on a reef in the Caribbean?"
"Wow," Kelly said. "That's uncalled for."
Zane laughed. "I thought being engaged to Ty gave me some extra snark privileges. — Abigail Roux

A man comes walking north. He carries a sack, the first sack, containing provisions for the road and some implements. The man is strong and rough-hewn, with a red lion beard and little scars on face and hands, sites of old wounds
were they gotten at work or in a fight? Maybe he has been in jail and wants to go into hiding, or perhaps he is a philosopher looking for peace; in any case, here he comes, a human being in the midst of this immense solitude. He walks and walks, in a silence broken by neither bird nor beast. — Knut Hamsun

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole ... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%. — Mike Epps

If I could come out in this book and advocate complete revolution and the violent overthrow of the United States of America, without being thrown in jail, I would not have written The Anarchist Cookbook, and there would be no need for it. — William Powell

There is something fantastic about getting divorced. Everyone should do it to experience the extraordinary sense of freedom after being in marriage jail. — Delia Ephron

The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15, we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail. — P. J. O'Rourke

To all of you alive people walking around, taking your multivitamins and busy being Lutheran or getting colonoscopies, you need to invest in a good-quality, long-lasting wristwatch with day and date functions. Don't count on getting any cell phone reception in Hell, and don't think for a second you'll have the forethought to die with your charger cord in hand or even find yourself locked inside a rusted jail cell with a compatible electrical outlet. — Chuck Palahniuk

When a child is born in a jail and during their life all they know is the jail they were born into, the idea of freedom becomes so terrifying that they ridicule the very thought of being free, as a clinical illness. It is nothing like the song that a caged bird sings. — Alejandro C. Estrada

The door of the jail being flung open, the young woman stood fully revealed before the crowd. It seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom that she might conceal a certain token which was wrought or fastened to her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush and yet a haughty smile, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it. — Henry David Thoreau

There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting. — Tracy Chapman

I feel like the fellow in jail who is watching his scaffold being built. (On construction of reviewing stands for inauguration of his successor John F Kennedy) — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I feel like somebody who just got out of prison after 40 years for something she didn't do, like I got pardoned by the governor. When dear friends deal with me with mixed emotions, it is a little like being told, 'Well, Jenny, we're glad you got sprung, really, but quite honestly we did kind of like you better when you were in jail. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

The Don looked around his cell, including the naked 30 year-old woman sprawled in his bed and steaming bowl of Mussels Marinara sitting in front of him. He was always famished after sex and couldn't envision a life on the outside that would limit all of the things he loved to do. In a way, being on the outside would be like going to jail for Don Vito. — Phil Wohl

Now place yourself in the shoes of Clifford Runoalds, another African American victim of the Hearne drug bust.2 You returned home to Bryan, Texas, to attend the funeral of your eighteen-month-old daughter. Before the funeral services begin, the police show up and handcuff you. You beg the officers to let you take one last look at your daughter before she is buried. The police refuse. You are told by prosecutors that you are needed to testify against one of the defendants in a recent drug bust. You deny witnessing any drug transaction; you don't know what they are talking about. Because of your refusal to cooperate, you are indicted on felony charges. After a month of being held in jail, the charges against you are dropped. You are technically free, but as a result of your arrest and period of incarceration, you lose your job, your apartment, your furniture, and your car. Not to mention the chance to say good-bye to your baby girl. This is the War on Drugs. The — Michelle Alexander

It's like being on Death Row in an American jail. You are waiting for the door handle to turn, not knowing whether it's a reprieve or just your final breakfast before being executed. — Howard Wilkinson

The only excuse for being broke is being in Jail. — Curtis Jackson

The only victory that really counts in prison is survival. But survival means more than simply being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail term; the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, at the end of his sentence, can't be said to have survived it. And it's for those small victories of the heart, and the spirit, and the will that we sometimes risk the body that cradles them. — Gregory David Roberts

Being in a ship is like being in jail, with the chance of being drowned. — Samuel Johnson

My mom used to get arrested for being with my dad. She would get fined. She would spend weekends in jail. — Trevor Noah

Being in love is better than being in jail, a dentist's chair, or a holding pattern over Philadelphia, but not if he doesn't love you back. — Judith Viorst

I knew that Vaclav Havel didn't want to look into people's eyes, because he said that, when he was being interrogated during the communist period and had been taken to jail, that, if you look directly into somebody's eyes, they can persuade you. And so you can see that so clearly in this interview, where he's looking down.And I kept saying to him as we kept coming - came over here: " You have to look up."And I clearly had no influence on him. — Judy Woodruff

The court, as now constituted, would be meaningless without the jail which gives it its power. But if there is anything I have learned by being in jail, it is that prisons are wrong, simply and unqualifiedly wrong. — Barbara Deming

Third, though oppression to the level of 'being thrown in jail' for one's Christian faith may not yet be apparent in the United States, history confirms that religious oppression in any given nation can be just the passage of a few laws away. Within six years of Adolph Hitler's selection as Germany's leader, the nation was imprisoning and killing its own people. — John Price

She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Still, Kasab seemed lucky to Abdul. "They will probably beat him lots in the jail," Abdul said one day, "but at least Kasab knows in his heart that he did what they said he did." That had to be less stressful than being beaten when you were innocent. The — Katherine Boo

I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time ... there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became. — Rosa Parks

I know a lot of people who are weak, who are in a perpetual cycle of poverty and being locked up. There are guys from my neighborhood who are in jail or who are dead. It does take a certain strength to know your environment and say, 'I can grow beyond it.' — Mekhi Phifer

But when we have families, when we have children, this gives us a purpose for being, to protect our children, to avoid going to jail because if I'm in jail, who looks after my children, who's there for my wife? — Ernie Hudson

After he was sensibly convicted of the wicked state of his life, and converted, he was baptized into the congregation, and admitted a member thereof, viz., in the year 1655, and became speedily a very zealous professor; but upon the return of King Charles to the crown in 1660, he was the 12th of November taken, as he was edifying some good people that were got together to hear the word, and confined in Bedford jail for the space of six years, till the act of Indulgence to dissenters being allowed, he obtained his freedom, by the intercession of some in trust and power, that took pity on his sufferings; but within six years afterwards he was again taken up, viz., in the year 1666, and was then confined for six years more, when even the jailor took such pity of his rigorous sufferings, that he did as the Egyptian jailor did to Joseph, put all the care and trust in his hand: — John Bunyan

I was struggling at Rookie Camp to be quite honest with you. Basically, it was a week of being locked down like in jail for me. I would say about 50 percent of it was useful. The most challenging part of it was off the court. I mean, man we were just sitting there at times. We had meetings from about 10 a.m. in the morning to about 10 at night and you can't get a workout in at all. — Andrew Bogut

She's just being sensitive. You put a girl in jail and forget about her for a few months, and they all take it so bloody personally."
"You forgot about her?"
"She's lucky I did. She'd been sent to kill Rhiannon."
"Then why isn't she dead?"
Celyn sighed. "It was a sad, weak attempt, really. She clearly didn't want to do it. Auntie Rhiannon just felt bad for her. — G.A. Aiken

But even though nobody from the government ever says anything out loud about a lack of evidence being the real reason nobody from these companies goes to jail, we're all - including reporters who cover this stuff - still supposed to accept that as the real explanation. It's a particular feature of modern American government officials, particularly Democratic Party types, that they often expect the press and the public to give them credit for their unspoken excuses. They'll vote yea on the Iraq war and the Patriot Act and nay for a public option or an end to torture or a bill to break up the banks. Then they'll cozy up to you privately and whisper that of course they're with you in spirit on those issues, but politically it just wasn't possible to vote that way. And then they start giving you their reasons. — Matt Taibbi