With Animal Factory you'd think that because it's mostly interiors, you could shoot it anywhere. So we shot this in Philadelphia, and we had the cooperation of the prison system.
I think it's hard to learn democracy when we make children prisoners until they're nineteen years old.
One of my biggest fears is not being able to break out of a rut; of becoming a prisoner to my ways, unable to change course. But in my mid-thirties, I learned you can change your thinking.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
Well, one thing, you got to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge sentencing you to 25 years in prison before you realize that freedom of expression can no longer be taken for granted.
In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available... in America right now.
Bush sees the evil as out there in the wider world, residing in people who 'hate freedom'. Look at his immediate response to the pictures of prisoner abuse; this is not what Americans do, these are not our values.
After doing two years in prison, trust me, I've seen a lot of tough guys pray. They're not just praying for themselves; they're praying for their family and the people they've let down.
I do a number of things working on human rights issues, prison recidivism rates, and then I also push and have worked a lot on the social issues of rebuilding the family.
Writing is powerful. Whether it's a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty International writing letters on behalf of political prisoners, the power of telling stories is usually what causes change.
Here's how I think of my money - as soldiers - I send them out to war everyday. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there's more of them.
If I'm tapping anything, it's the frustration of people who have something to say at work or home or in some social setting and just can't do it. I do it for them. I don't take prisoners.
I know that I'm already in the history books and that people are going to remember me as the prisoner of war and the fabricated stories, but you know, to me I was just another soldier over there doing my job.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Australia has a very big history of incarceration. What does that mean to us? What does it mean that we came over to a country that's not necessarily ours and filled it with white prisoners?
One out of 100 citizens of the U.S. is going to prison, and it's not that the system is making criminals, it's that it's making criminals better criminals. We're breeding them like rats and it has to change.
Marriage is a kind of prison for anyone who's miserable in it - men and women alike - and anyone who's suffered through difficult periods in marriage dreams of escape from it.
It might be argued that genuine spontaneity is not really possible or desirable so long as printed scores of great works exist. All modern musicians are, for better or worse, prisoners of Gutenberg.
Prison opened my eyes to so many things. It was a great time. I met interesting people. I got to understand the behaviour of the police and the media. I am an observer of the human race.
The prison industrial complex is perhaps, at least domestically, the most striking example of us putting profit before people. It all stems from one basic misunderstanding: that the public good can be shepherded by private interests.
If it is a crime to love the South, its cause and its President, then I am a criminal. I would rather lie down in this prison and die than leave it owing allegiance to a government such as yours.
