Patricia McConnell

Prison experience puts distance between me and any person who hasn't been there, done that.

— Patricia McConnell

My friends in prison were mostly women more like myself: not historical figures who I did not relate to as peers, but…

— Patricia McConnell

There's a stone I had made for Luke at the top of the hill road, where the pasture opens wide and the…

— Patricia McConnell

A crisis of confidence is so common that it should be considered a universal part of the adoption process.

— Patricia McConnell

My husband regarded my prison past as a dirty secret and never asked me one single question about it. But what I…

— Patricia McConnell

One of the principle things life has taught me is that we always have a choice. When we say we "can't," we…

— Patricia McConnell

I'm actually a lowlife. On the street at fifteen and also in jail for the first time at that age, and off…

— Patricia McConnell

My published works are concrete evidence that I exist.

— Patricia McConnell

Although I was simply what today would be called a "mule" - the bottom of the food chain in the drug biz…

— Patricia McConnell

At eighty-one, health club-lusting is as close as I'll ever come to getting laid again.

— Patricia McConnell

I had a naïve idea that if I could tell the story, people would be outraged and do something about conditions in…

— Patricia McConnell

“We humans may be brilliant and we may be special, but we are still connected to the rest of life. No one…

— Patricia McConnell

I couldn't stand living in a society that admires the emperor's new clothes, when I see so clearly that he is naked.

— Patricia McConnell

I can say now is that sneaking up on people is a major delight in my old age, but it always has…

— Patricia McConnell

The loss of a sexual life is one of the worst things about getting really old. The worst thing.

— Patricia McConnell

People think I'm educated because I talk and write well, but the fact is I never finished high school. I've read a…

— Patricia McConnell

I was already a wreck when I went in, and prison nearly destroyed what little was left of me. I was worse…

— Patricia McConnell

I was addicted to amphetamines at the time I got busted, but I tend to think I was on a determined, self-destruct…

— Patricia McConnell

The fact that educated white women automatically assume that we have similar backgrounds annoys me. We don't. I feel like I'm in…

— Patricia McConnell

I felt compelled to blow the whistle on the penal system, under the delusion that doing so might result in some change,…

— Patricia McConnell

The only thing I remember writing in prison is a couple of poems for an inmate magazine they did once a year.

— Patricia McConnell

I don't believe anyone can go through the prison experience without being changed by it. The experience becomes part of your identity…

— Patricia McConnell