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161 " She was perceptive and sensitive but had great difficulty expressing herself in a way that was not off-putting to others, and she got loud and angry when she felt disrespected, which was often. "
― Piper Kerman , Orange Is the New Black
162 " When I walked through the terrifying gates of the FCI seven months before, I certainly didn’t look like a gangster, but I had a gangster mentality. Gangsters only care about themselves and theirs. My overwhelming regret over my actions was because of the trauma I had caused my loved ones and the consequences I was facing. "
163 " My bedrock sense of myself was in some danger. Food, sometimes edible, was brought on a regular schedule, and in this new universe that was really all you could count on as a stable principle. "
164 " From a young age I had learned to get over—to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve. So when exhilarating transgressions required getting over on authority figures, I knew how to do it. I was a great bluffer. "
165 " Yet for the first time I really understood how my choices made me complicit in their suffering. I was the accomplice to their addiction. A lengthy term of community service working with addicts on the outside would probably have driven the same truth home and been a hell of a lot more productive for the community. But our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed. "
166 " It seemed to me that my total demonstrated failure at being a good girl was more than matched by the urgency of being a good person. "
167 " We walked through a small hallwayinto an institutional tiled room with harsh fluorescent light. It felt old, dingy, clinical, and completelyempty "
― Piper Kerman
168 " I was beginning to suspect that the most dangerous thing you could do in prison was get sick. "
169 " In such a harsh, corrupt, and contradictory environment, one walks a delicate balance between the prison's demands and your own softness and sense of your own humanity "
170 " Our shared mantra became “It can always get worse.” We literally repeated it aloud every day, as a charm to ward off the possibility that our situation might grow even more unpleasant. The "
171 " Girl, you better get some act-right, or I’m going to bust your head to the white meat!”) "
172 " I am fairly certain that I was the first Seven Sisters grad to eat duck liver chased with a Diet Coke in the lobby of a federal penitentiary. "
173 " The truth is, the prison and its residents fill your thoughts, and it’s hard to remember what it’s like to be free, even after a few short months. You spend a lot of time thinking about how awful prison is rather than envisioning your future. "
174 " Any self-respecting New York woman has a good pedicure, even if she’s in the clink. "
175 " one was present, interacting in any affirmative way with the people who filled those prisons. "
176 " What is the point, what is the reason, to lock people away for years, when it seems to mean so very little, even to the jailers who hold the key? "
177 " The beautiful irony of Larry’s family was that when something minor was amiss, it was as if the Titanic were going down, but when a real disaster struck, they were the people you wanted in your life raft. I had expected an explosion of recrimination and rejection and instead got a big hug. "
178 " Then in August everyone had one month in which to smoke their brains out before going cold turkey on one of the most addictive drugs known to man. "
179 " I also gleaned that just about all of the women in Chicago were on pretrial status—their cases had not yet been resolved, but they did not or could not make bail. So they were captive here while the wheels of justice ground. A couple of them had been here for months without being charged with a crime. This made their lives uncertain on every level, and those who were not already crazy were acting pretty wacko, driven nuts by rage and instability. "
180 " I Piper, put your hair up. Be more professional and shit,” advised Delicious "