Quotes from Edward Bunker

Sono convinto che chi non legge resta uno stupido. Anche se nella vita sa destreggiarsi, il fatto di non ingerire regolarmente parole scritte lo condanna ineluttabilmente all'ignoranza, indipendentemente dai suoi averi e dalle sue attività.

I need a kid like I need a bad heart. A pretty kid is a ticket to trouble... and I'm too old to ask for that. Shit, I haven't even booked Tommy the Face in two years. I'm turning into a jack-off idiot.

Life was precious. Life was all that mattered. Yet it meant nothing if you weren't living as you wanted.

Your basic problem is emotional immaturity. You want life to be like in the movies, full of excitement. That's how a child's mind works, but the adults accept regularity, tedium, frustration.

In three months Ron read more than he had in his entire previous life. He felt his mind widen, his perceptions become more acute, for each book was a prism refracting the infinitely varied truths of experience. Some were telescopes; some microscopes.

I believe that anyone who doesn't read remains dumb. Even if they know how, failing to regularly ingest the written word dooms them to ignorance, no matter what else they have or do.

Hope is still ahead of you - but someday it will be behind you. That's really the point of children, to have someone to pin hope to.

One of the best things in being a criminal is having no schedule.

But the human mind, when it reaches the bottom of the abyss, must bounce back or disintegrate entirely.

Après quatre mois d'emprisonnement, j'en sais plus sur la justice qu'après deux années d'université.

During the interim, no matter how much agony the man may feel, he also experiences excitement, the excitement of learning how to cope with a closed society that reflects free society as a funhouse mirror reflects the human form: everything is there, but distorted.

Ron fut frappé par le contraste qui régnait entre les coulisses de la justice avec leurs cages à barreaux d'arrière-cour et la solennité très digne de la salle du tribunal. Le public voyait l'édifice, pas les communs.

Everything in life stands on what has gone before. You do this or that because, at the moment, it seems what to do. You are faced with this or that because of what happened somewhere earlier in your journey of life. What happened earlier depends on what went before that. Who would dispute that nobody stands in a void or a vacuum?

It was several years later that Mrs. Wallis told me the story of her philanthropy, which was always personal and individual rather than as part of an organization. She never appeared in the photos of the women's committee of this or that charity. She did her good works alone and quietly, although her obituary would be headed: "Angel of Hollywood.

Convicts on the main line sent me books from the library. I've always been able to make it if I could read.

Poor Jerry. He's giving all of himself to something he's got to loose. -So does everybody...sooner or later. -Freeze on that. -On what? -On all that heavy philosophy bullshit. I'm talking about here and now and everyday important things that people live by. If you extrapolate everything-nothing matters.

The thief's underworld, which is different from that of the mafiosi, gang bangers, and racketeers, has many adages and observations. If you can't do the time don't mess with crime is the best-known. Another is: A thief's nerve is in direct proportion to his financial condition. Or: Hard times make hard people.

Gatsby was great, but most unlikely. Gatsby was too unreal. Although I thought Fitzgerald wrote as well as any American novelist in the twentieth century, Gatsby was as far from truth as Fu Manchu. He was too soft to be what he was storied to be. Gatsby might be a cat burglar, but Gatsby was definitely not a gangster. He lacked the force of will to compel tough men to his bidding simply by force of will. He failed another test; he was too weak for a broad.

I felt as if I could ride the bus through eternity and be happy.

Reading taught me that prison had been the crucible that had formed several great writers. Cervantes wrote much of Don Quixote in a prison cell, and Dostoyevski was a mediocre writer until he was sentenced to death, commuted within a few hours of execution, and then sent to prison in Siberia.