Gates got up, but not fast or jerkily, with the same slowness that had always characterized him. He wiped the sweat off his palms by running them lightly down his sides. As though he were going to shake hands with somebody.He was. He was going to shake hands with death.He wasn't particularly frightened. Not that he was particularly brave. It was just that he didn't have very much imagination. Rationalizing, he knew that he wasn't going to be alive anymore ten minutes from now. Yet he wasn't used to casting his imagination ten minutes ahead of him, he'd always kept it by him in the present. He couldn't visualize it. So he wasn't as unnerved by it as the average man would have been.("3 Kills For 1")

Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper, to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.

I've seen so much and lived it all. I  wanted  to  bite   the  earth  and  taste  it.  It  is  both  bitter  and  sweet,  and   if  I  had  my  time  to  live  over  again,  I  wouldn’t  change a  damn  thing —  Reg  Spiers

I would prove to you that being different isn't a death sentence but a call to arms.

The inmates made jokes about the chair, the way people always make jokes about things that frighten them but can't be gotten away from.

The wide corridor up the centre of E Block was floored with linoleum the colour of tired old limes, and so what was the Last Mile at other prisons was called the Green Mile at Cold Mountain.