A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.
Charles Dickens
Could be Solzhenitsyn describing the Gulag, or Tucker describing D.C.
I read that when Dickens was a child he and his family were in a debtor’s prison. It seems to have colored his whole life including his work. I look for quotes that have something to say that I can relate to. It makes for a varied collection.