When it comes to locations I'm one of those crazy authors who has to see it touch it taste it before I trust myself to recreate it for my readers. Having said that visiting a locked-down pediatric psych ward was the most intimidating research I've ever done - and I've visited maximum security prisons shooting galleries bone collections etc.

The biggest kick I get is to communicate with those who are exiled from the game - in hospitals homes prisons - those who have seldom seen a game who can't travel to a game those who are blind.

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

I have to say when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons or whether one wants to overturn them.

If a dad does his job we don't need prisons we don't need jails. That's what I saw growing up.

The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons.