Out Of 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

He actually preferred the idea that one of his victims had sent the messages, there was a risk of the police finding out, a risk of jail or another psychopathic stalker, but having to listen to his mother nag him for the rest of his life seemed infinitely worse. — David Jester

Are you there vodka? It's me, Chelsea. Please get me out of jail and I promise I will never drink again. Drink and drive. I will never drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but I'll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like to Drink and Stay Home. — Chelsea Handler

The law is what I can get away with and stay out of jail. — Joe Gores

We buy our way out of jail but we can't buy freedom,
We buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need them,
Things we buy to cover up what's inside. — Kanye West

Some people go through the heavy stuff. They fight in wars. They're in jail. They start a business and it gets shut down by gangsters. They end up hustling their ass in a foreign country. It's one long list of setbacks and humiliations. But it doesn't touch them, not really. They're having an adventure. It's like: What's next? And then there's other people who are just trying to live quietly, they stay out of trouble, they're maybe ten years old, or fourteen, and one Friday morning at 9:35 something happens to them, something private, something that breaks their heart. Forever. — Michel Faber

I could have killed her when we first met and I've been out of jail by now. — Waylon Jennings

I have ate out of your garbage cans to stay out of jail. I have wore your second-hand clothes ... I have done my best to get along in your world and now you want to kill me, and I look at you, and then I say to myself, You want to kill me? Ha! I'm already dead, have been all my life. I've spent twenty-three years in tombs that you built. — Charles Manson

I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema. — Mohsen Makhmalbaf

I feel like I'm playing some giant video game, or trying to solve a really complicated math equation. 'One girl is trying to avoid forty raiding parties of between fifteen to twenty people each, spread out across a radius of seven miles. If she has to make it 2.7 miles through the center, what is the probablitiy she will wake up tomorrow morning in a jail cell? Please feel free to round pi to 3.14'. — Lauren Oliver

'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

I suspect that many of the horror stories about jail are greatly exaggerated, but still, I wouldn't want to pass out in one. — Jules Cassard

Good friends bail you out of jail. Best friends will be sitting next to you saying, That was awesome!! — Anonymous

Like civil-rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what's happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I'm here. You're here, too. We are present. — Douglas Rushkoff

The Brinktown jail is one of the most ingenious ever propounded by civic authorities. It must be remembered that Brinktown occupies the surface of a volcanic butte, overlooking a trackless jungle of quagmire, thorn, eel-vine skiver tussock. A single road leads from city down to jungle; the prisoner is merely locked out of the city. Escape is at his option; he may flee as far through the jungle as he sees fit: the entire continent is at his disposal. But no prisoner ever ventures far from the gate; and, when his presence is required, it is only necessary to unlock the gate and call his name. — Jack Vance

Any candidate who suggests that too many people are going to jail for too long will be targeted in an opponent's television ads as "soft on crime" and booted out of office. The result is that the United States imprisons far more people than it should, with disproportionate harm falling on African American communities who have been stripped of large numbers of men. A — Steven Pinker

I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life. — Raymond Chandler

Nelson Mandela sat in a South African prison for 27 years. He was nonviolent. He negotiated his way out of jail. His honor and suffering of 27 years in a South African prison is really ultimately what brought about the freedom of South Africa. That is nonviolence. — Coretta Scott King

Morality may keep you out of jail, but it takes the blood of Jesus Christ to keep you out of hell. — Charles Spurgeon

I know that my buddy Jorgeson was a real American hero. I wish that he had lived to be something else, if not a painter of pictures then even some kind of fuckup with a factory job and four divorces, bankruptcy petitions, in and out of jail. I wish he had been that. I wish he had been anything rather than a real American hero. — Thom Jones

Presently I shall be introduced as 'this venerable old gentleman' and the axe will fall when they raise me to the degree of 'grand old man'. That means on our continent any one with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty. — Stephen Leacock

Threatening others with physical harm allows the possibility of cutting through all this. It makes possible relations of a far more simple and schematic kind ("cross this line and I will shoot you," "one more word out of any of you and you're going to jail"). This is of course why violence is so often the preferred weapon of the stupid. — David Graeber

The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He is a potter working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally, he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for a kingdom. A LONG OBEDIENCE — Eugene H. Peterson

Roebling rejoined the Army of the Potomac in February 1863 back at Fredericksburg, where he was quartered late one night in an old stone jail, from which he would emerge the following morning with a story that would be told in the family for years and years to come. The place had little or no light, it seems, and Roebling, all alone, groping his way about, discovered an old chest that aroused his curiosity. He lifted the lid and reaching inside, his hand touched a stone-cold face. The lid came back down with a bang. Deciding to investigate no further, he cleared a place on the floor, stretched out, and went to sleep. At daybreak he opened the chest to see what sort of corpse had been keeping him company through the night and found instead a stone statue of George Washington's mother that had been stored away for safekeeping. — David McCullough

He did a terrible thing and eliminating him would have left the world tidier. Or so goes the logic of the last fifty years of American justice. We throw away flawed people, people who have made terrible mistakes, with regularity and great alacrity. We jail drug dealers for decades, and we execute killers. We want them away. Out of sight. — Dave Eggers

I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists. — Nelson Mandela

In the security community, this letter is known by all as a "get-out-of-jail-free card." Pen testers tend to be very conscientious about making sure they always have a copy of the letter with them when they're on or anywhere near the premises of the client company, in case they get stopped by a security guard who decides to flex some muscle and impress the higher-ups with his gumshoe instincts, or challenged by a conscientious employee who spots something suspicious and has enough gumption to confront the pen tester. — Kevin D. Mitnick

Purvis. This is my associate, Samantha Kofer. We've been hired to get our client out of jail. Snowden took a step back as Mattie pressed ahead. Samantha, treading water, wasn't sure what to do, so — John Grisham

I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right ,,, take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value" Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better. — Alan Moore

Howie was unburdened with human ties or responsibilities. He bounced around from one loser job to another, his adult life spent in and out of trouble, jail and the workhouse without a care in the world. Howie — Dennis Carstens

A woman in Bower Bank, Jamaica, had eight children. The father was in jail in the United States, no longer sending remittances.

Her fourteen-year-old daughter "get burn up from her face, breast, chest, down to her legs with boiling water February 2 1999. That night just because I never have any money earlier to cook, me go town and get a money, buy something to cook cause them never eat from morning. Me daughter bend down, to pick up something near the stove and bounce off the pot of boiling water pan herself. Me tek her to hospital and me never have the money fe register her. Me beg somebody the money and register her. Me owe the hospital $10,500 for the bill, a caan [can't] pay it. She's to go back for treatment because her hand caan stretch out or go up, but the hospital will not see her if I don't pay the bill. — William Easterly

If they could keep out of jail for this short stretch, most would go on to be the spine of American society - fixing the cars, working the factories, growing the food and fighting the wars. — Bruce Springsteen

And of course,Addie."
What did he mean by that-"of course, Addie?" Did he mean "Of course you remember this airheaded chick who attacked the mayor with cardboard and had to be bailed out of jail?" That's not what really happened,but how was I supposed to know what he remembered of the incident? — Tristi Pinkston

Churchill was a brilliant and inspiring rhetorician, but one of the first things he did as the head of the British nation was to put German Jews in jail. Tens of thousands of Jews - who had just been fortunate enough to get out from under Hitler only a few years before - spent the entire war in jail. — Nicholson Baker

For aiding and abetting drug cartels suspected in more than twenty thousand murders, groups famous for creating the world's most gruesome torture videos - the Sinaloa Cartel in particular, with its style of high-volume reprisal killings and public chainsawings and disembowelings, makes al-Qaeda look like the Peace Corps - HSBC got a walk. Tory Marone, for smoking their product and passing out on a park bench, got sent to jail. — Matt Taibbi

So he steeled himself and sent a wordless, desperate cry for aid up into the sky, hoping it would pierce the roof of the jail and the mantle of clouds and the net of stars behind that, venturing out beyond to where nothingness had no claim and there might be some consciousness, some intelligence that would listen and understand and sympathize. Something, just something. But it seemed unlikely that anything so vast would notice or care.
He was so small. A little man scrambling across the wilderness, trying to make the cosmos pay attention and make sense. In that midnight belly of the jail, dawn was a memory and the sun was no more than a dream, and hope tasted more of a curse to him than a blessing. — Robert Jackson Bennett

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he's done. — Richard Hugo

[Thoreau's] famous night in jail took place about halfway through his stay in the cabin on Emerson's woodlot at Walden Pond. His two-year stint in the small cabin he built himself is often portrayed as a monastic retreat from the world of human affairs into the world of nautre, though he went back to town to eat with and talk to friends and family and to pick up money doing odd jobs that didn't fit into Walden's narrative. He went to jail both because the town jailer ran into him while he was getting his shoe mended and because he felt passionately enough about national affairs to refuse to pay his tax. To be in the woods was not to be out of society or politics. — Rebecca Solnit

Wisdom's daughter walks alone - "
"Ella!" Frank stood suddenly. "Maybe it's not the best time - "
"The Mark of Athena burns through Rome," Ella continued, cupping her hands over her ears and raising her voice. "Twins snuff out the angel's breath, Who holds the key to endless death. Giants' bane stands gold and pale, Won with pain from a woven jail. — Rick Riordan

Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us. — Cecily McMillan

The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless "reforms" that changed little. Dostoevski once said: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people. — Howard Zinn

[Friendships] are easy to get out of compared to love affairs, but they are not easy to get out of compared to, say, jail. — Fran Lebowitz

I'm a substitute mom."
"You're more like a crazy aunt who only gets called when somebody needs bailing out of jail. — Ilona Andrews

Witnessing Matthew's limitless energy and his growing list of accomplishments, Simon Hunt had informed him decisively that any time he tired of working for Bowman's, he was welcome to come to Consolidated Locomotive. That had prompted Thomas Bowman to offer Matthew a higher percentage of the soap company's future profits.
"I'll be a millionaire by the time I'm thirty," Matthew had told Daisy dryly, "if I can just manage to stay out of jail. — Lisa Kleypas

Laura never again came to the drugstore as long as I continued to work there.
The next time I saw her, she was a wreck of a woman, notorious around black Roxbury, in and out of jail.
She had finished high school, but by then she was already going the wrong way.
Defying her grandmother, she had started going out late and drinking liquor.
This led to dope, and that to selling herself to men. Learning to hate the men who bought her, she also became a Lesbian.
One of the shames I have carried for years is that I blame myself for all of this.
To have treated her as I did for a white woman made the blow doubly heavy.
The only excuse I can offer is that like so many of my black brothers today, I was just deaf, dumb, and blind. — Malcolm X

If this were a book written to entertain small children, you would know what would happen next. With the villain's identity and evil plans exposed, the police would arrive on the scene and place him in a jail for the rest of his life, and the plucky youngsters would go out for pizza and live happily ever after. But this book is about the Baudelaire orphans, and you and I know that these three unfortunate children living happily ever after is about as likely as Uncle Monty returning to life. — Lemony Snicket

In jail you learn that there are two kinds of guys in this world - and I don't care if they're human or bloodsuckers - there's the ones that take it and the ones that hand it out. And this guy, man - this guy gives it out like fucking candy ... — Guillermo Del Toro

Journalists don't need a get-out-of-jail-free card, ... Instead we should be given more access to information. — Chris Powell

How about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing."
"Have you read it?"
"No, I haven't been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust. — Haruki Murakami

Playboys' was an authentic junkie record. Art Pepper was just out of jail, Chet was arrested a week after the session, and piano player Carl Perkins would die two years later. When the record was recorded I was behind bars myself. In 1955 I was caught with narcotics and had to serve almost five years. Luckily, I was allowed to keep my saxophone in the cell, and I composed a lot during the time. They had to come fetch the music for Playboys from jail. — Jimmy Heath

What is the price of justice? What is the price of justice? When bail is set unreasonably high, people are behind bars only because they are poor. Not because they're a danger or a flight risk - only because they are poor. They don't have money to get out of jail and they certainly don't have money to flee anywhere. — Loretta Lynch

I resigned myself to the fact that the only way I would get Mishrani out of the movement was to deprogram her. It was a terrifying prospect. There were very real risks that it could go wrong and I could wind up in jail, or worse, Mishrani could end up hating me for the rest of her life.

There was no way around it, though. It was a thing that needed doing, and I was just the guy to do it. — Bhakta Jim

The government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures.The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill. — Ayn Rand

Patra is going to be pissed." Cory says, with a half smirk. Then she holds out the bottle of creamer and says, "Fix it."
"Fix what? Cory! Are you really going to ignore what just happened? That
suck face just threatened to take you and me to jail!"
"She said trial, but that's not really the point I am trying to make."
"I know, but it's the point I
am trying to make!"
"I know that you're scared. I am trying to show you why you shouldn't be."
She pushed the bottle of creamer in front of me again.
"I am not SCARED. I'm angry!" I ignore the creamer.
"Same thing." She shrugs. (From The Carver's Magic) — B.L. Brooklyn

Continually trying to satisfy someone who attempts to control you is like bailing someone out of jail when they need to learn a lesson. They will never learn how to take care of themselves unless you are not there to take care of them. Get out of the middle. You take care of you. Let God take care of them. — Kate McGahan

I still don't have any crushes on actresses or models. It's always been one of those things with girlfriends. They say, "Who's on your list?" What do you call it, the Get Out of Jail Free card? — Henry Cavill

You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that's for sure. For heaven's sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That's why it's the wrong thing to ask, if you're really trying to make a decision."
So what's the right thing to ask?"
Do I want to try? Do I think it would be interesting, maybe even enjoyable in the long run, to share my life with this kid and give her my best effort and maybe, when all's said and done, end up with a good friend. — Barbara Kingsolver

People of great power wield great power, but people of lesser power or people who have fallen out of power go to jail without adequate evidence, or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars. — Ratan Tata

Awkward conversations. They're the heart of the drug trade. The driving force that keeps criminals out of jail is paranoia. You can think you know people, but the truth is, you never know who they're talking to. The life of an outlaw: Around every corner lies a cop. In every basement waits a bust. Every friend is the guy who sells you out to keep his own ass out of jail. Sure, it was rare, but you just never knew.
The result was a series of shorthand and euphemisms so obscure even the pros often weren't sure what they were talking about. Sales became pickups. Pot, ganja, bud, or weed became lettuce, green, happy, herb, smoke... the list went on, and changed from dealer to dealer. — Daniel Younger

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

When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes, - two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals, - the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Bailee had watched them come in and out of the sheriff's office the week she'd been in jail. She, Sarah, and Lacy had sworn daily that if any one of the three won the lottery to become a husband, the other two women would help their friend become a widow as fast as possible. — Jodi Thomas

More than anything else, I miss the hope. In jail, we we had the hope that we might get out, go to college, have fun, go to the movies. I am twenty-seven. I don't know what it means to love. I don't want to be secret and hidden forever. I want to know, to know who this Nassrin is.You'd call it the ordeal of freedom, I guess. — Azar Nafisi

The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail ... and I'd never heard it before in my life. — Bernice Johnson Reagon

I slept in van Gogh's bed. I worked in the room where he painted. I saw the place where he was cared for when he cut off his ear. I lived in the jail cell where he stayed. And I looked out the window. You remember that picture of the cornfields through the bars? That was what I saw. — Irving Stone

I could envision it all to clearly: Stuart or Debbie finding the dented door off its hinges, lying in the snow. "She came in, ravaged the boy, stole plastic bags, and ripped off the door in her escape," the police would say in the APB. "Probably making her way to bust her parents out of jail. — Maureen Johnson

Calming ain't curing, is it, girl?" the woman asked aloud. "Keeping you hushed might keep me out of jail, but sure as the world, calming ain't curing. — Jonathan Odell

If I had a brother in jail and one in Georgia, I'd try to bust the one out of Georgia first. — Charles Frazier

You can't escape an assasin," He leaned forward, shadows swallowing his eyes. "Hangings, bumbling bureaucrats, dishonest crewman, jail - those you can talk your way out of, you try hard enough. But this kind of death is the is the only kind of death. — Cassandra Rose Clarke

Upstairs, it's 18th century England, where farming out the poor meant lumping the blind, crippled, insane, epileptic, deaf and dumb in almshouses with criminals because The History of the Poor Laws was designed to discourage mendacity, wherein anyone giving alms to beggars was put in jail . . ." In other words, little has changed - many still believed there's no distinction between tolerating the suffering of others and causing it. — Philip Schultz

I think I've always wanted to be a role model, and I think ... everyone should try to live their life like they'd like to be a role model. I think it's like the thing keeping me out of jail. — Mindy Kaling

Rose: "Did you hotwire this car? Did you steal this car?"
Dimitri: "You have an interesting set of morals. Breaking out of jail is okay. But steal a car, and you sound totally outraged."
- Rose Hathaway and Dimitri Belikov — Richelle Mead

Fully 60 percent of all young black men who drop out of high school will go to jail. This should disgrace the country. But it does not, — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert's. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don't know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul's Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert's. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California - or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle. — Gary D. Schmidt

I begged Ana to shut them up, come out as Cuban, play the jail card. But she refused to claim that authority. 'It will mean you, as a Kentucky girl, have nothing valuable to say about Cuba. And Cubans have nothing to say about the rest of the world. — Kelly J. Cogswell

I haven't even known for a week! I found out who I was the day after the ball, when I was sitting in a jail cell preparing to be handed over to Levana like a trophy. So between breaking out of prison and running from the entire Commonwealth military and trying to save your life, I haven't had much time to overthrow an entire regime. I'm sorry if I've disappointed you, but what do you want me to do? — Marissa Meyer

At nighttime, you just try to keep him out of jail. — David Cone

Inside was a tableau of frustration that might've been straight out of Norman Rockwell, if Norman Rockwell had painted people doing hard time in jail. — Ransom Riggs

Every new invention is like a baby. You think it may cure cancer or become the president, but in the end, you're happy it just stays out of jail. — Eric Betzig

I think I had kind of an advantage. When I was growing up, my dad had just got out of jail and he had a great record collection. He had - it was all - these were the songs. So I heard a lot of these songs, like, my whole life, so for me it was easy. I already knew what I was going to sing. — Chris Isaak

I am a Christian, you know, Julia.'
So am I. But I'm not above staying out of jail any way I can. — Ann B. Ross

I promise to shoot anything, human or monster, that threatens me while I'm gone'. He made the Boy Scout sign, three fingers to heaven. 'You can bail me out of jail and explain that i was just following orders'. — Laurell K. Hamilton

That while a good friend would bail you out of jail, a best friend would be in jail alongside you. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

When I was being moved, a deputy U.S. Marshal with a Southern accent so thick it sounded like he was doing a bad parody of a Good Ol' Boy sheriff laughed and said, "You're the only prisoner we ever had that got booted out of jail! — Kevin D. Mitnick

The chief moral obligation of the 21st Century is to build a green economy that is strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Those communities that were locked out of the last century's pollution-based economy must be locked into the new, clean and renewable economy. Our youth need green-collar jobs, not jails. — Van Jones

A prison chaplain in the West of England confessed he had given up one prisoner as hopeless, so stubborn was he against any approach by him, and known throughout the jail as the most truculent and obstinate troublemaker.
But one day the governor was told of a visitor who insisted on seeing him. To his surprise, it was a little girl. "He's my daddy," she explained, "It's his birthday." The governor allowed the prisoner to be sent for.
"Daddy," said the child as he was brought in, "this was your birthday, so I wanted to come and see you." Then taking a lock of hair out of her pocket, she offered it to him. "I had no money to buy a present for you. But I brought this, a lock of my own hair."
The prisoner broke down and clasped her in his arms, sobbing. He became a changed man after that and guarded, as his most precious possession, the lock of hair that reminded him that somebody still loved him. — Francis Gay

The meek shall inherit the earth meant nothing to me. The meek were battered in West Baltimore, stomped out at Walbrook Junction, bashed up on Park Heights, and raped in the showers of the city jail. My understanding of the universe was physical, and its moral arc bent toward chaos then concluded in a box. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

A judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail. — Mario Cuomo

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour - for the horse was soon tackled - was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. — Lysander Spooner

I'm going to stay with you. If you go to jail, we might as well both go. — Ernest Hemingway,

Yes, they manage to sound very reasonable to themselves as they talk of deterring others from crime; but the act of putting a man in jail remains essentially the act of trying to wish that man out of existence. From the moment of arrest one begins to feel against one's flesh the operation of this crude attempt at sorcery. — Barbara Deming

To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralysing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar. — Desmond Tutu

Isn't breaking a supervillian out of jail a little ... much? — Kirstin Van Dyke

Caught' is a funny word," said Serge. "Most criminals catch themselves, like getting stuck at three A.M. in an air duct over a car-stereo store, and the people opening up in the morning hear crying and screaming from the ceiling, and the fire department has to get him out with spatulas and butter. If your arrest involves a lot of butter, or, even more embarrassing, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, then you actually need to go to jail, if for nothing else just some hang time to inner-reflect. — Tim Dorsey

Since 2008, no high-ranking executive from any financial institution has gone to jail, not one, for any of the systemic crimes that wiped out 40 percent of the world's wealth. — Matt Taibbi

Sure, she was going to turn eighteen in less than a year. She'd been in the system long enough to know that eighteenth birthdays weren't marked by celebrations. When the checks stopped coming, she'd be on her own. "Aging out" of foster care meant becoming homeless. She'd heard stories of kids ending up in jail and hospital emergency rooms, selling drugs, living on welfare and food stamps. How desperate did a person have to become before they broke the law to survive? For now, things were good, and she didn't want to mess that up. — Ellen Marie Wiseman

That our popular art forms have become so obsessed with sex has turned the U.S.A into a nation of hobbledehoys; as if grown people don't have more vital concerns, such as taxes, inflation, dirty politics, earning a living, getting an education, or keeping out of jail. — Anita Loos

Two a.m.' He swallowed, then said, You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail ... they'll come for you. It's like, the highest level of friendship. — Sarah Dessen

Once I broke him out of jail, as it were, I would be responsible for him until my lawyers took over. — Hunter S. Thompson

A promise is a direction taken, a self-limitation of choice. As Odo pointed out, if no direction is taken, if one goes nowhere, no change will occur. One's freedom to choose and to change will be unused, exactly as if one were in jail, a jail of one's own building, a maze in which no one way is better than any other. — Ursula K. Le Guin