Evaristo Salas Jr.

And there always seemed to be a divide.

And not having that out here where you can just conversate with anybody and just talk.

There's no little certain, oh, maybe I shouldn't ask about this or maybe I shouldn't ask about that.

Besides the cultural norms, everything is pretty... In prison, you can't... Small talk is considered strange to anybody outside of the prison.

If I was a teacher or even a guard, just talk small talk, it's just kind of a weird feeling.

It's been amazing, though.

Well, I mean, the analogy you use is great, too, the Sean Shea redemption analogy, because that's one of my favorite movies.

And actually, that movie is kind of the – I think I watched it for the first time, and I think it was in 2000, 1999, around that time.

And what actually kind of got me the idea of writing letters was Andy Dufresne, you know, pursuit of trying to get that library.

That was kind of the, I was like, well, maybe that would work, you know, if I just wrote letters and bugged the hell out of these people and just annoyed them until they just finally said, ah, we'll give him something.

And I always thought about that movie so much because he captures it in that movie so well when he says, you know, it's a fight between the two.

And I remember the moment when he's arguing kind of with Red.

Red's telling him hope is a dangerous thing.

And he says, you need to get used to that.

I always thought about that because you're going to be one of those two guys in prison.

You're either going to be Red or you're going to be Andy.

You're going to either try to adjust so much where you just accept the fact that there is no hope.

There's nothing.

This is where you live.

And your mind gets locked into that kind of prison mentality.