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A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden QUOTES

A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden QUOTES

1 " I felt good that, although there was no future, there would always be a past. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

2 " The good doctor reassured John these were people who put their psychopathy to good use. They lived productive, well-adjusted lives as surgeons, CEOs and ambulance drivers. The light bulb went on. The CSC [Correctional Service of Canada] doesn't have to go through all these gyrations to reprogram anyone, they just have to find every inmate the right job! "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

3 " Prison is, simply put, the bottom rung of the welfare ladder. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

4 " I write out those things no child should ever have been made to know "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

5 " Prisons are about addictions. Most prisoners are casualties of their own habits. They have all created victims, some in cruel and callous ways, but almost to a man they have first practiced that cruelty on themselves. Prison provides the loneliness that fuels addiction. It is the slaughterhouse for addicts, and all are eventually delivered to its gates. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

6 " We are a society impatient with its misfits "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

7 " There are no children's books in prison. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

8 " Don't the Conservatives know that Jesus was soft on crime? "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

9 " What to pack for the digger? Bruce Powe once addressed a Writers’ Union AGM, and one phrase had stuck with me: “the future of solitude is reading.” My future was a lock. I’d better pack the reading. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

10 " Since leaving prison twelve years ago I had wanted desperately to build something of my own life, too. But with every task completed, every responsibility met and promise kept, there came — along with a sense of satisfaction and well-being — another unsettling sense that my life was becoming nervously enclosed. Increasingly I felt too far inside, too weatherproofed; I feared I might lose the feel of the rain on my face and the wind in my hair. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

11 " It seemed the perfect place to unmake my life, just for this afternoon. Just for today. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

12 " One person presents their story each day; no one has to be Sigmund Freud to figure out these were men who grew so tired of being wounded, they went out and wounded something else. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

13 " Still, I wish there existed a meat cleaver I could simply hand to some sort of metaphysical butcher who could lop off the part of me that committed these crimes, and who could send that part off packing to the stoney lonesome. Then the rest of me — the other ninety-nine percent — the part that is a devoted father, a decent neighbour, a dedicated husband, and a caring, useful member of my community could go home. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

14 " felt good that, although there was no future, there would always be a past. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

15 " Prisons are about addictions. Most prisoners are casualties of their own habits. They have all created victims — some in cruel and callous ways — but almost to a man they have first practised that cruelty on themselves. Prison provides the loneliness that fuels addiction. It is the slaughterhouse for addicts, and all are eventually delivered to its gates. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

16 " doesn’t encourage those locked up as criminals to learn to engage with their experience on any intellectual level. The discourse on crime and punishment, in our parliaments and newspapers, has been reduced to bumper stickers. Zero Tolerance: Three Strikes and You’re Out. We are a society impatient with its misfits. "

― , A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden