QUOTE : I asked the Warden why he never left this valley, why he didn’t get away from the prison and me and the ignorant young guards and the bells across the lake and all the rest of it. He had years of leave time he had never used. He said, “I would only meet more people.” “You don’t like any kind of people?” I said. We were talking in a sort of joshing mode, so I could ask him that. “I wish I had been born a bird instead,” he said. “I wish we had all been born birds instead.