Shakespeare Saved My Life: An Uplifting Memoir for Anyone Who Has Been Changed by a Book

What are your own personal prisons—and how can you overcome them?

“This prison doesn’t matter,” says Larry, referring to the prison of concrete and steel. Breaking out of habitual patterns of self-destructive thinking can be more damaging and more difficult to break out of. How did Larry break those chains, with the help of Shakespeare?

It is an absolute magic, and the magic has little to do with what Shakespeare has to say. You can memorize every cool quote and be as clueless as you were before reading. So it is not Shakespeare’s offering that invokes this evolution. The secret, the magic, is YOU! Shakespeare has created an environment that allows for genuine development.

“Sitting there on your bunk, you may find it difficult to relate to a king sitting on a throne. But we are all the same people, just in different places.”

I was trying to figure out what motivated Macbeth, why his wife was able to make him do a deed that he said he didn’t want to do just by attacking his ego: ‘What, are you soft? Ain’t you man enough to do it?’ As a consequence of that, I had to ask myself what was motivating me in my deeds, and I came face-to-face with the realization that I was fak

How many times have you laid there in bed fighting the torment of what you could’ve done, or should’ve done, or how you might have prevented the outcome? Do you know what separates you from Hamlet? Four hundred years. That’s it. We all share his condition of feeling vulnerable, scared, conflicted, pressured. We also share his courage, integrity, pr

I felt like such a punk, I felt so weak. I really was a coward. I never stood up for myself. I mean, I stood up for myself as we associate standing up for yourself—fighting and violence. But that’s not standing up for yourself. I mean standing up for myself like thinking for myself. Now, I feel more okay with myself. I’m feeling stronger in my abil