Antoine de Saint-Exupery — Wind, Sand and Stars

What all of us want is to be set free. The man who sinks his pickaxe into the ground wants that stroke to mean something. The convict’s stroke is not the same as the prospector’s, for the oblivious reason that the prospector’s stroke has meaning and the convict’s stroke has none. It would be a mistake to think that the prison exists at the point where the convict’s stroke is dealt. Prison is not a mere physical horror. It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison; the horror resides in the failure to enlist all those who swing the pick in the community of mankind. We all yearn to escape from prison.