September 11, 2008

"It's an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment. Having no one else to rely on, to share confidences with, to seek counsel from, you begin to doubt your judgement and your courage. But you eventually adjust to solitary as you can to almost any hardship, by devising various methods to keep your mind off your troubles and greedily grasping any opportunity for human contact."
- John McCain, "Faith of My Fathers" (p 206)


"The sound of the human voice, unappreciated in an open society's noisy clutter of spoken words was an emblem of humanity to a man held at length in solitary confinement, an elegant and poignant affirmation that we possessed a divine spark that our enemies could not extinguish."
- ibid (p 212)