To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck.

接触文学，接触世界文学，不啻是逃出民族虚荣心的监狱，市侩的监狱，强迫性的地方主义的监狱，愚蠢的学校教育的监狱，不完美的命运和坏运气的监狱。

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The real background to the prison boom, which shows up only sporadically in the prison literature, is the crime wave that preceded and overlapped it.

NEWYORKER: The Caging of America

I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, and who in the process killed two people, for which I spent ten years in prison and, as letters from scholars of American literature tell me, for which I will continue to pay a high price long into the not-so-sweet hereafter.

NPR: Chapter 1

Literature not only offers them a chance to escape the tough and monotonous life in prison but allows them to acquire knowledge which will be useful when they are released.

UNESCO: Country Profile: Nicaragua