“How can a prisoner understand their punishment to have been worthwhile to anyone, when it's dealt in a way so offhand and indifferent?” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“Great institutions have leaders who are proud of what they do, and who engage with everyone who makes up those institutions, so each person understands their role. But our jailers are generally granted near-total anonymity, like the cartoon executioner who… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“I looked down at the doors of the forbidden Dorms and studiously examined the bulletin boards covered with incomprehensible information about events and rules… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“Stoicism sure comes in handy when they take away your underpants. But how to reconcile it with one's insatiable need for other people?” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“Some of the mothers looked overwhelmed - they were no longer accustomed to supervising their own kids in a normal, day-to-day way.” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“The female guard in R&D explained that they had no women's street clothes, so she gave me the smallest pair of men's jeans they… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“I had forgotten about the pleasures of college radio, the exquisite randomness of what got played, the twenty-minute between-songs banter of nineteen-year-olds, the smack… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“I had long recognized that faith helped people understand their relationship to their community. In the best cases it helped women in Danbury focus… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“We have a racially based justice system that overpunishes, fails to rehabilitate, and doesn't make us safer.” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“If he is a half-decent human being, he will find himself the object of crushes. If he is a cocky bastard, even more so.” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“If you had the misfortune of having the government intimately involved with your life, whether via public housing or Medicaid or food stamps, then… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the world, a place where the U.S. government now puts not only… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“He told us that it was important to eat right, exercise, and treat your body as a temple. But he didn't tell us how… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“According to the CDC, cigarettes kill over 435,000 people a year in the United States. Most of us in Danbury were locked away for… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
