The green mile Quotes

“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.”

“The Death House back then was a self-contained unit, with its own hospital, kitchen, exercise yard and visiting room. The cells were inadequate, dark, and did not have proper sanitary facilities or ventilation. One window and skylight furnished the ventilation and light of the entire unit. Twelve cells were on the lower tier, six on each side, facing each other, with a narrow corridor between them. Five cells were located in an upper tier. There was an area the prisoners called the Dance Hall that housed a prisoner to be executed on his last day. The narrow corridor connected the Dance Hall to the execution room, where the Electric Chair resided. The prisoners named this corridor the Last Mile or the Green Mile, because this was the last walk a prisoner would take all the way to the small green riveted door at the end of the corridor, on his way to the execution room.”

“We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.”

“...some of it's how he acts like he's King Shit of Turd Mountain, but mostly it's that he's sneaky, and he likes to hurt”

“…but I guess you can never wash anything completely away, not from this dark glass of a world, and now I saw them again, a tangle of names overlying one another, and looking at them was like listening to the dead speak and sing and cry out for mercy.”

“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.”

“When you spend your life taking care of mudmen, you can't help getting a little dirty yourself.”

“A left turn meant life - if you called what went on in the sunbaked exercise yard life, and many did; many lived it for years, with no apparent ill effects.”

“Sometimes, the embers are better then the campfire. It's strange, but it's true.”

“Everyone— black as well as white— thinks it's going to be better over the next jump of land.”