Jack Henry Quotes & Sayings

Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present - and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser - but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all. — Jack Iams

The cab moves for a moment but then I see the blurry, glowing red lights through the downpour against my face and heavy lens of tears covering my eyes. The cab's brake lights. The car has stopped, as have I-and then I see the back door open.
It's my Jack Henry.
He gets out of the cab and stands in the heavy rain looking back at me. I don't know how-because my body has turned to mush-but I'm off my knees and running toward him.
... I touch his face because I can't believe he's real. You sort of have a beard. Almost. I love it. It's sexy. — Georgia Cates

Henry nodded. "May I ask you a question?"
"Certainly, Your Grace."
He pointed at Jack. "Is he the Artful Dodger?"
Mr. Dickens bent low. "I write fiction, Your Grace. The characters in
my books do not really exist, but if they did" - he winked - "I do believe
he would be the Artful Dodger."
"I knew it!"
"And do you see that gentleman over there?"
"Lord Claybourne?"
Dickens nodded. "He would be Oliver."
"And what about Miss Frannie?"
"She is every sweet girl who appears in the story. — Lorraine Heath

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there. — Jack Henry Abbott

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 Abbott

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 Abbott

My eyes, my brain seek out escape routes wherever I am sent. — Jack Henry Abbott

I find it painful and angering to look in a mirror. — Jack Henry Abbott

I did notice as I walked that Amos had stayed right next to me. And Jack was close on the other side of me. And Miles was in front of us and Henry was in back of us. They were surrounding me as we walked through the crowds of kids. Like I had my own emperor's guard. — R.J. Palacio

You'll let him talk you out of your dreams. That's what love does sometimes- talks you out of your dreams." "Not me," Katie said. "Jack would talk me into my dreams. — Patti Callahan Henry

There is a paradox at the core of penology, and from it derives the thousand ills and afflictions of the prison system. It is that not only the worst of the young are sent to prison, but the best - that is, the proudest, the bravest, the most daring, the most enterprising and the most undefeated of the poor. There starts the horror. - Norman Mailer's introduction to In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott No one knows what it's like to be the bad man. — Stephen Hunter

Nothing is over and done with. Nothing. Not even your malice. — Jack Henry Abbott

The mind does not regulate its own condition. Mental depression, for example, is a state caused by the body ... William James described this relationship when he said we become sad because we shed tears: we do not shed tears because we are sad. — Jack Henry Abbott

The wasteland that is your memory now comes under the absolute dictatorship of idols too terrible to mention. — Jack Henry Abbott

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 Abbott

As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing. — Jack Henry Abbott

I've known pain my whole life, but this is a new kind for me. It isn't born of something wrong or ugly. This pain is conceived out of beauty - my love for Jack Henry McLachlan. I embrace it. I clutch it as tightly as I can with both fists because I never want to forget the love I have for him. Loving him will forever be my Beauty from Pain. — Georgia Cates

Sometimes I doubt that anyone with a philosophical turn of mind is fit to judge anyone. He never comprehends the concept of guilt. — Jack Henry Abbott

To illustrate: to walk ten miles in an enclosed space of ten feet is not really movement. There are not ten miles of space, only time. — Jack Henry Abbott

I can never forget that Chinese student I knew in Paris - Mr. Tcheou, I think it was. One day, upon asking him if he had ever read Hamlet, he answered: "You mean that novel by Jack London? — Henry Miller

Page 99: ... unless something changes, the future that you can expect is more of the past. Sorry or becoming committed does not make Jim Carrey a great golfer, or made Jack nicklaus funny. Recommitment does not make a person who is unsuited for a particular position suited for it all of a sudden. Promises by someone who has a history of letting you down in a relationship mean nothing certain in terms of the future. — Henry Cloud

I would never say, to justify a lapse in principle, "I am only human"
as though that were some kind of justification for weakness, moral weakness. Flesh and blood is much, much stronger than fools believe. — Jack Henry Abbott

There was never sufficient evidence presented at my trial to support a finding of intent to kill. — Jack Henry Abbott

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 Abbott

I escaped one time. In 1971 I was in the free world for six weeks. — Jack Henry Abbott

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 Abbott

Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and ... get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY! — Henry Rollins

Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent. — Paul Theroux

Henry,that's how you get rid of fleas. You keep them from laying eggs. You go to war with them. — Jason Jack Miller

Indeed, it is almost a rule that the more simple and commonplace something is, the more difficult it is to understand it. — Jack Henry Abbott

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 Abbott

One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free. — Jack Henry Abbott

He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to prop his moccasins before the fire.
'An' I wisht this cold snap'd break,' he went on. 'It's been fifty below for two weeks now. An' I wisht I'd never started on this trip, Henry. I don't like the looks of it. I don't feel right, somehow. An' while I'm wishin', I wisht the trip was over an' done with, an' you an' me a-sittin' by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an' playin' cribbage- that's what I wisht.'
— Jack London

Knowing how little she cares about the money I could spend, makes me want to buy her the world. -Jack Henry, beauty from pain — Georgia Cates

She's gonna know the rooster's in the hen house when she doesn't find me there, so we'd better hurry. — Georgia Cates

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 Abbott

It is funny that some of must not only get our bearings but must also know all the details of the world before we venture out into it. — Jack Henry Abbott

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 Abbott

I'll never forget the love I have for Jack Henry. Never. — Georgia Cates

I have been desperate to escape for so many years now, it is routine for me to try to escape. — Jack Henry Abbott

Everyone in prison has an ideal of violence, murder. Beneath all relationships between prisoners is the ever-present fact of murder. It ultimately defines our relationship among ourselves. — Jack Henry Abbott

The only time they appear human is when you have a knife at their throats. The instant you remove it, they fall back into animality. Obscenity. — Jack Henry Abbott

I have to stop this. As much as I'd like to, I can't sit in my car outside the studio and mind-fuck Jack Henry all day. — Georgia Cates

I cannot be critical of an infant whose only possible source of nourishment can be found in the dugs of a wolf. — Jack Henry Abbott

Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box. — Henry Miller

An' right here I want to remark,' Bill went on, 'that that animal's familiarity with camp-fires is suspicious an' immoral.'
'It knows for certain more'n a self-respectin' wolf ought to know,' Henry agreed — Jack London

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life. — Jack Henry Abbott