Riker Quotes

I’m going to give you a handful of wildflowers so, each petal that falls will remind you that the earth breathes, and the moon rises.

Issues are like tissues. You pull one out and another appears!

Flair is what makes the difference between artistry and mere competence. Cmdr. William Riker

There can be no justice so long as law is absolute. Even life itself is an excercise in exceptions.” “When has justice ever been as simple as a rule-book?” - Riker

The Moon is always there. A half blink of shadow, a crescent of an eyelash, opulent in fullness, spellbound in nothingness, and a friend.

Commander William T. Riker: It's just that our mental pathways have become accustomed to your sensory input patterns. Lt. Commander Data: Hm. I understand. I am also fond of you, Commander. And you as well, Counselor.

She's a former librarian,' Heat said. 'She doesn't have a bad side.' 'You obviously haven't known enough librarians. I wouldn't wish a pissed-off librarian on the worst cretin at Rikers Island.

To be loved and to love, takes courage. To be fully seen is incredibly rare and breathtaking. We lower our masks and see a celestial inner being. It is our full self -- the supernova as well as the black holes. Our fears and doubts. Our anger and joy...This is love.

Off To The Races" My old man is a bad man but I can't deny the way he holds my hand And he grabs me, he has me by my heart He doesn't mind I have a Las Vegas past He doesn't mind I have an LA crass way about me He loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart Swimming pool glimmering darling White bikini off with my red nail polish Watch me in the swimming pool bright blue ripples you Sitting sipping on your black Cristal Oh yeah Light of my life, fire of my loins Be a good baby, do what I want Light of my life, fire of my loins Give me them gold coins, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Ready for you My old man is a tough man but He's got a soul as sweet as blood red jam And he shows me, he knows me Every inch of my tar black soul He doesn't mind I have a flat broke down life In fact he says he thinks it's why he might like about me Admires me, the way I roll like a Rolling Stone Likes to watch me in the glass room bathroom, Chateau Marmont Slippin' on my red dress, puttin' on my makeup Glass film, perfume, cognac, lilac Fumes, says it feels like heaven to him Light of his life, fire of his loins Keep me forever, tell me you own me Light of your life, fire of your loins Tell me you own me, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Now I'm off to the races, laces Leather on my waist is tight and I am fallin' down I can see your face is shameless, Cipriani's basement Love you but I'm going down God I'm so crazy, baby, I'm sorry that I'm misbehaving I'm your little harlot, starlet, Queen of Coney Island Raising hell all over town Sorry 'bout it My old man is a thief and I'm gonna stay and pray with him 'til the end But I trust in the decision of the Lord to watch over us Take him when he may, if he may I'm not afraid to say that I'd die without him Who else is gonna put up with me this way? I need you, I breathe you, I never leave you They would rue the day I was alone without you You're lying with your gold chain on, cigar hanging from your lips I said "Hon' you never looked so beautiful as you do now, my man." And we're off to the races, places Ready, set the gate is down and now we're goin' in To Las Vegas chaos, Casino Oasis, honey it is time to spin Boy you're so crazy, baby, I love you forever not maybe You are my one true love, you are my one true love You are my one true love

I'm a brilliant filmographer. Is that a word?

The game isn't big enough unless it scares you a little. Cmdr. William Riker

The Sex Criminal by Dr. Bertram Pollens, senior psychologist of the New York City penitentiary on Rikers Island and head of its clinic for sex offenders.3

You know it's a dysfunctional family," said Riker, "when the one you like best is a mass murderer.

He had the radio turned to some Spanish-language station at a volume that reminded me of the holding tank at Riker's Island - and for an added touch of authenticity he screamed 'Maricon!' and waved his fist out the open window at another driver who had the audacity to attempt to share the road with us.

Her eyes grew wide and she briefly covered her mouth with her hand. "Are you a virgin?" she whispered. "What? No!" "But when do you find time with that rigid schedule of yours? I mean prisoners at Rikers have more freedom!

Data: My positronic brain has several layers of shielding to protect me from power surges. It would be possible for you to remove my cranial unit and take it with you. Riker: Let me get this straight--you want me to take off your head? Data: Yes sir

Nicole had no right to be jealous.Hell,she didn´t even have a reason.They might have some sort of physical chemistry thing going on,but there wasn´t anything emotional.Nothing.She didn´t even like Riker.Liar."There´s nothing to finish,"she said. "Nothing to finish?You wondered why sex with a vampire was such a big deal.I´m going to show you."Riker moved toward her,slowly,like a cat sneaking up on a bird."Stamina."He stepped closer."Multiple orgasms."Closer,and her mouth went dry."Flexibility."Closer.Her skin flushed hot."Strenght."Closer.Her stomach did a flip-flop."The ability to sense heat so we know what parts of the body are the most sensitive at the right time."Closer.A throbbing ache started low in her pelvis."The ability to hear the slightest change in the tempo of your pulse so we know exactly how every stroke,kiss,and lick effects you." Oh.Dear.lord.

The unexpected is our normal routine. Commander Riker

Riker tells Data to just get on with it already, so Data says Ferengi are like Yankee traders from 18th-century America. This indicates that, in the 24th century, the traditional practice of using 600-year-old comparisons is still in vogue, like when you’re stuck in traffic on the freeway, and say, “Man, this is just like Vasco de Gama trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope!

They may well have had a backup system, but if it crashed at the same time as their main system, then that's all she wrote,' Riker said. 'Excuse mee, sir' said Data. 'That's all who wrote?' 'It's merely an expression, Mr. Data,' said Picard. 'It means that was the end of it. There was nothing they could do.' 'That's all she wrote' repeated Data. He nodded. 'Yes, I see. She, in this case, doubtless referring to the human conceptualization of Fate, writing a final chapter, as it were, and putting a period to the-' 'Please, Mr. Data,' Picard said impatiently.

I want to sleep next to you in that curled fashion of a comma or in quotations that repeat I love you in whispers the weight of fine cotton and wrinkles are our known secrets because age has reached a stage where words are in our eyes and from our heart.

The little man behind that desk was the joke candidate of election years, best remembered for his trademark yellow bowtie. In Riker's fashion philosophy, bows should be reserved to the pigtails of little girls or the collars of tiny dogs hatched from peanut shells.

[Myne] shouldn’t be enjoying the feeling of closeness, of holding someone who didn’t belong to him, but damn, this felt good. He didn’t get to be with females often, not when his bite caused excruciating pain, and he definitely didn’t get to save a life . . . ever. Nicole was depending on him in order to survive, and he began to shake with the magnitude of it all. Rike, he whispered to himself. If you come back and don’t mate this female before the next daybreak, I’ll kill you myself. Of course, that was if Riker didn’t kill him first for getting a raging erection for his female.

Shit,” he breathed against her lips. “I’ve been wanting to do this since I first tasted you in the prey room.” The reminder that he’d tossed her into a cold, dank dungeon and then scared her to death should have put a damper on things, but it didn’t. She was so stressed out, so tired of not knowing if she was going to live or die—she couldn’t help but embrace these few precious moments of forgetting the hell that was her life and remembering what it was like to actually live. Boldly, she ran her hands up Riker’s arms, letting her fingers map the rough scars and thick veins that wound around his biceps.

I'll tell you a story, far, far from here where blades of grass are fluent in sentient knowledge and trees are a mandala of prayer.

Tears and poetry are the closest language to all things divine, unspoken, spoken and felt.

She threw a lasso over summer and rested in the grasses, realizing betrayal wouldn’t hurt as much, if she didn’t care.

I’m not of this world; it pains me deeply. So, each night just to survive, I snip a piece of mountain, sea or sky and fly.

As someone called Anonymous once said, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.

I have to set an example, now more than ever. Facing death is the ultimate test of character. – Cmdr. William Riker

Reading and writing being the only good methods I have ever found for emptying my insomnia mind, and calming it.

Maybe it’s impossible for poets to hide the abundance of moons inside when their heart is carved from the clouds of a sunrise.

Funny how Boris wasn’t the monster who came alive in her scariest night terrors. No, the title of Nightmare King belonged to the male looming like a death sentence in front of her, a gorgeous sandy-haired vampire in worn, bloodstained jeans and a loaded weapons harness beneath a long leather coat. A male named Riker who, twenty years ago, had killed Terese. His own mate.

Maybe a captain more obsessed with strict protocol and formality would have been stalwart in hiding his feelings, but Riker didn’t subscribe to such emotionally stunted ideals of manhood.

This self was not really you, it didn't sufficiently encompass what you care about or what you want to say. Because at the end of the day, you are uniquely ill-equipped to convey to the world what you care about or what you want to say.

Riker’s gaze shifted down. To her throat. Then his mouth shifted down. To her throat. Boris’s face flashed in front of her eyes, and panic squeezed her heart in a cold fist. Like she had so many years ago, she tried to fight, but Riker held her easily, pinned to the wall with his weight. As his lips closed over her skin, she stopped breathing and waited for the rip of his teeth. Instead, there was only a warm sweep of his tongue and, with it, the most bizarre and disturbing sense of pleasure.

Amanda raised her glass in a toast. “Here’s a wet one to Saint Iris of the Hummocks!” Then she winced and scowled at Riker, who had kicked her under the table. Polly raised her glass and quoted from Hamlet: “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Det var en glad Dag før ham, han hadde ikke rikere Glæder end naar han kunde gjøre godt på denne Maate og hævde Lærdommens og Bokens Overlegenhet, det var hans Levebrød og hans Lidenskap. En Lidenskap skal Mennesket ha, somme trodser Ild og Vand for at faa bøie Verber.

Wesley Crusher: Say goodbye, Data. Lt. Cmdr. Data: Goodbye, Data. [crew laughs] Lt. Cmdr. Data: Was that funny? Wesley Crusher: [laughs] Lt. Cmdr. Data: Accessing. Ah! Burns and Allen, Roxy Theater, New York City, 1932. It still works. [pauses] Lt. Cmdr. Data: Then there was the one about the girl in the nudist colony, that nothing looked good on? Lieutenant Worf: We're ready to get under way, sir. Lt. Cmdr. Data: Take my Worf, please. Commander William T. Riker: [to Captain Picard] Warp speed, sir? Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Please.

You enjoy speaking your ideas but you also hate it, and finally you hate it more than you enjoy it. Hearing yourself form words and project them toward people, who will probably not care much anyway. Who might at best watch curiously as your words sail past them and bounce off the back wall.

There was the pessimism of the revolutionaries, as Keynes called it, the worry of those who thought the world so doomed that the only hope was to turn everything upside down. Then there was the pessimism of the reactionaries, those who thought the world so doomed that any sort of change at all would send civilization reeling into the abyss.

Jeg vil følge menneskeslektens vei! Jeg vil svømme som en fjær på historiens strøm, leve den opp igjen, som i en drøm, – se heltenes kamper for stort og godt, men i sikker behold, som tilskuer blott, – se tenkerne falle, martyrene bløde, se riker grunnes og riker forgå, se verdensepoker slå ut av det små; – kort sagt, jeg vil skumme historiens fløte.

The crowd screamed, and in the same instant the band whammed into "Lady" like a desperate man into a ten-dollar prostitute.

He sat up, his chest moving, his mouth open as if he'd run the annual San Francisco Bay to Breakers race in record time instead of, as the event intended, having fun.

Though little had actually happened to Susannah the car smelled of lovemaking.

She was sitting on her own long blonde hair, which Susannah had noted came to just under her rear, cupping it in a provocative way.

They only throw clean ones

You feel like butter," he whispered, "and velvet.

Frankly, you're the most homeless person--emotionally--I ever met.

Even an imagined togetherness beats being alone.

I felt also, for the first time that evening, the pinch of my own deep loneliness, never far from me in those days, always just out past the edge of my so-called self-awareness.

Ignorance doesn't make you good at anything. You don't free yourself by unlearning. You have to learn past all you've learned.

Words shaped the world economy and the human body, both.

But for some reason reading works, reading in particular. The mental release, the distraction, or maybe just the voice, the company.

Acquittal. The kourtroom broke into a loud cheer. The judge just gave up calling for order. He had to wait for the shouting to die down. It was a long time coming. All the spectators were jumping around hugging each other. The marshals led me out of the courtroom and handcuffed me. They brought me back to Rikers Island where i was put into solitary confinement.

Whenever that happened, Joey clung to Troy's hand, willing him to know that Riker meant nothing. Well, maybe not nothing. He'd given Joey a valuable gift; he'd taught him what love wasn't. During their showdown in the men's room, it had dawned on Joey what love was. Love took long walks, spent time together talking about nothing. It gave smiles, and hugs, and trips to the beach when it really didn't want to go, because it wanted to share a special place with someone else. Love gave away possessions it valued, knowing the receiver valued them more. Love admitted being wrong, said it was sorry, and did whatever it took to make things right. It called in favors and put a town on the map to make life better for one person who lived there. Love was Troy.

I’d been caught up in myself, my grand entrance to humanity. But humanity was just a bunch of people I didn’t know standing on the far side of a pool, and none of them seemed very impressed.

Now the box is open, reality spills out, and there's no way to stuff it back in. Judgment has been meted out, the first sentence handed down, first of many because once this trial gets going there is no going back. The proceedings are irreversible, the stakes existential, the accusations keep piling up, the prosecution is relentless, the prosecution never rests, the defense never rests, nobody in this whole damn place ever rests.

Perhaps the real revelation is simply that life has caught up with you. All this time, when you thought you were fooling everyone, that was only because no one was paying attention. But eventually the world does pay attention, and suddenly it is you who are on trial, not the world but you. The trial you'd managed to put off for years is finally underway and you see, now, that you are not the plaintiff, as you'd always assumed, but the defendant, not the accuser but the accused.

Let me start with this: I am an apostate. I have lied. I have cheated. I have done things in my life that I am not proud of, including but not limited to: • falling in love with a married man nineteen years ago • being selfish and self-centered • fighting with virtually everyone I have ever known (via hateful emails, texts, and spoken words) • physically threatening people (from parking ticket meter maids to parents who hit their kids in public) • not showing up at funerals of people I loved (because I don’t deal well with death) • being, on occasion, a horrible daughter, mother, sister, aunt, stepmother, wife (this list goes on and on). The same goes for every single person in my family: • My husband, also a serial cheater, sold drugs when he was young. • My mother was a self-admitted slut in her younger days (we’re talking the 1960s, before she got married). • My dad sold cocaine (and committed various other crimes), and then served time at Rikers Island. Why am I revealing all this? Because after the Church of Scientology gets hold of this book, it may well spend an obscene amount of money running ads, creating websites, and trotting out celebrities to make public statements that their religious beliefs are being attacked—all in an attempt to discredit me by disparaging my reputation and that of anyone close to me. So let me save them some money. There is no shortage of people who would be willing to say “Leah can be an asshole”—my own mother can attest to that. And if I am all these things the church may claim, then isn’t it also accurate to say that in the end, thirty-plus years of dedication, millions of dollars spent, and countless hours of study and

Dr. Nicole Martin.” Riker felt Myne’s eyes boring into him. “She’s alive?” “Apparently.” A shiver of hatred slithered up Riker’s spine. Until last week, when he’d seen a newspaper article glorifying the return of the Martin heir, he’d believed only one member of the godforsaken immediate family, Charles, was alive. “After the rest of the Martins were slaughtered in the rebellion, she was sent to Paris to live with her mother’s relatives until she was old enough to work in Daedalus’s French division as a vampire physiologist.” The mere mention of the infamous Seattle Slave Rebellion made Myne’s voice degenerate into gravel. “And she’s here now?” Riker nodded at the female in the window. “Right there and all grown up. And if you’re done jacking off your dagger, we’ll go have a chat with her.” “You think she’ll cooperate?” Hell no. She was a Martin, after all, current CEO of the company that had revolutionized vampire slavery and used vampires like lab rodents to advance human medicine. Daedalus went through vampires like a slaughterhouse went through cattle, and Riker doubted the company held to any kind of “humane” standards. “For her sake,” Riker said slowly, “I hope so.

Plato, who was a total elitist, by the way, and hated democracy, because he thought average people were too dumb to make their own decisions and ought to be governed by philosophers, because philosophers alone understand “essential truths.” Apparently he never met anyone from our philosophy department

One pioneer remembered seeing “an open bleak prairie, the cold wind howling overhead…a new-made grave, a woman and three children sitting near by, a girl of 14 summers walking round and round in a circle, wringing her hands and calling upon her dead parent.” Janette Riker was only a young girl when she headed for Oregon with her father and two brothers in 1849. Late in September they camped in a valley in Montana, and the men went out to hunt. They never returned. While she waited, Janette built a small shelter, moved the wagon stove in with all the provisions and blankets, and hunkered down. She killed the fattest ox from her family’s herd, salted down the meat, and lived alone through the winter, amid howling wolves and mountain lions. She was discovered in April by Indians who were so impressed by her story that they took her to a fort in Washington. She never found out what happened to her family.

Outcomes of voting cannot, in general, be regarded as accurate amalgamations of voters’ values. Sometimes they may be accurate, sometimes not; but since we seldom know which situation exists, we cannot, in general, expect accuracy. Hence we cannot expect fairness either.

How’d you do that?” Riker gasped as he followed Scott out into the dim corridor. “Oh, you’d have to take my course in alternative signals at the academy. New term starts in September.” “Scotty, you’re a miracle worker.” “No, lad, I’m an engineer.

Well

Light isn't always buoyant and shadows aren't always despair; yet both, I believe, are limitless in lessons that they share.

You know it’s a dysfunctional family,” said Riker, “when the one you like the best is a mass murderer.

By the end of the night, Hannah was talking about Vulcans and Klingons and warp speed travel. Clara couldn’t help but feel just a bit proud of herself. By the end of the week, they were finished with Kirk and Spock and on to Picard and Riker. Within a few weeks, they would be on to Sisko and Janeway, too, and Hannah would scribble the Bird-of-Prey in her notebook and think of the stars.

Mahes does 90 days for stealing fish. It costs taxpayers $162 a day to feed, clothe and house him at Rikers Island His 90-day sentence will cost them $14,580, to punish him for refusing to pay the $51.31 check. In five years he has cost them more than $250,000. Your tax dollars at work. (...) All around us are inmates who just want to go home. Mahes is already there. He has no expectations, so there are no disappointments: he does not envy people who are free, because they are free to suffer.

Thinking you’re too good for crappy demeaning capitalism is a kind of snobbery.

the way everyone always reads the programs at the symphony, because there’s nothing else to do while you’re sitting there.

So many amazing people and the different ways they’ve contributed to humanity and all along all I’ve wanted was to be one of them. Not prizes or recognition, just to feel, myself, that I had joined that conversation.

All of this will end. Life will move on to whatever comes next.

Humanity's true dilemma, its permanent problem, is—what to do with all our free time.

Of course, when an economist tells you not to worry, you might worry all the more. An economist's "don't worry" usually means something bloodlessly calculated, like "worrying will increase the inclination to hoard currency and decrease spending on consumer goods.

How both nature and culture have taught us to derive our sense of purpose through work, and how for most people, leisure, too, will have to be learned, slowly and over time. "How to occupy leisure." Leisure as occupation. Finding meaning in a jobless life.

Money, in particular, will become less important to us. We'll understand that money was never important in itself, that it was only ever important in relation to our needs.

The rich man of his day still saw money as an end, not a means, and found meaning in a constantly deferred future rather than the here and now. For him, jam is not jam unless it is a case of jam to-morrow and never jam to-day.

John Cage once climbed into a sensory deprivation tank and came out later announcing that there's no such thing as true silence as long as you're alive, because you can always hear your own heartbeat. To experience absolute silence, you'd need to be dead.

Here I am serving myself up as some sort of expert on how to proceed through the world with intention and purpose when in fact I am utterly lost.

They need to know your shortcomings because that's what makes you human, and your humanity is a large part of why you're worth talking about at all. Okay?

We could all find our true callings and would come to judge the quality of our lives, not in dollars and possessions, but in how our time is spent.

How any time I would successfully fulfill some expectation, they would add others on top of it, like a boss who can't even keep track of all the meaningless crap he's asked you to do. How they kept upping the expectations and darkening the forecast, so that the more I did, and the further I advanced, the less likely it seemed that I would ever arrive.

The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all, said Joan Robinson.

You know these things in your mind, or think you know them, and you are capable of saying these things or writing them, but the moment you do, you immediately doubt them.

You are capable of being many selves but the moment you commit to one, it becomes an imposter, a dummy to dress up and roll out into the world in your place. And you hate the dummy, hate everything it says, even though it only says what you give it to say, and even though the words you give it to say are the best you can come up with. Which means, must mean, that the fault is not with the dummy but with you. That you are not as brilliant as you've always wanted to believe. As you've needed to believe. That it is easy to be impressed with yourself in private but another thing entirely to project a public self into the world—that this is a skill they don't teach in school, yet so so so many people seem to have learned it.

How did all these people, effortless at parties, easy on social media, how did they learn to be public? There must have been a moment, an afternoon in elementary school, when an imposing gray eminence showed up to class and passed out everyone's public personas while you were in the bathroom. And here you are decades later still forced to pretend you'd been in class that day.

The person who puts herself out there is always the accused. How did this never occur to you? No doubt it occurred to a part of you, the part that kept putting it off. No doubt that's why you postponed the trial as long as possible, preferring instead to live in a juvenile state of perpetual expectation, not because of the part that assumed you would someday be amazing, but because of the part that knew you would end up here, and what now?

If everyone else seems unfazed by this, the endlessness of everything, that isn't because they live any less in the midst or on the spot or under the gun but because they manage it better than you do, or at least they are better at hiding it. You're better at hiding than at hiding it, better at avoiding than bearing it, better at hoping it will all go away if you lie still eyes closed hands clenched hands clenched breathe—

You were born into an era of overload. Leaving things out is the great unmastered art form of your age.

Don't you ever look down again, Holly. You're with the Spades now. I won't let anyone fuck with you ever again. But you need to keep your chin up. We don't do weakness here. And there are more dangerous men than me in the MC. Some of them will hurt you if you give them an opening. Don't.

Back on the Enterprise, Riker heads into the holodeck to meet up with Data, who we learn can’t whistle like a human, wants to be human, and is consequently called “Pinocchio” by Riker. The whole bit really wants to be sweet and a little funny, but it ends up being kind of lame.

They all hop into the turbolift, and Picard says, “Hey, I think it’s great that you guys know each other, because it’s important for my key officers to be familiar with each other’s abilities.” Troi says, “We are, sir,” and Riker and Picard subtly high-five each other as the doors close.

DR. Harvey Riker replaced the receiver. He sighed heavily and put a hand through his long, unruly, gray-brown hair, a cross between Albert Einstein’s and Art Garfunkel’s. He looked every bit of his fifty years. His muscle had turned to flab from lack of exercise. His face was average to the point of tedium. Never much of a hunk to begin with, Harvey’s looks had soured over the years like a two-dollar Chianti. He

In the mid-1990s, New York City was spending $58,000 annually per adult inmate and $70,000 for each juvenile at Rikers.[6] In 2013, the annual cost per inmate was $167,000.[7] Over the last two decades this amounts to eight to ten times what the city spends on each child in its public schools.

Strategists seek to increase available options by manipulating structure and context, and in this way dictate the terms of conflict. One of the most captivating discussions of manipulating rules and boundaries to further the end of politics is in William Riker’s thought-provoking conception of heresthetics. Riker produces more than a dozen examples of a master strategist’s manipulation of perceptions, agendas, rules, and procedures to assure the strategist’s desired results would ensue. The strategist does not seek a specific outcome or decision; instead the process of decision-making is altered to increase the likelihood that a desired decision will be made. In most cases, the strategist provides additional choices for the opponent, inducing the other side to make a decision that was not previously apparent, but now seems necessary. By increasing the choices of others, strategists increase their own power.

As Molly, the administrator at Rikers Island, put it, “short-term terror and revulsion” are necessary. Just precisely what “necessity” they serve will be discussed in the next chapter. In this chapter we describe this situation in such a way that the “terror,” eliciting a kind of “revulsion,” is understood as intrinsic to Lockdown America, which consists, recall, not just of mass incarceration, but also the structural patterns of U.S. police violence and the death penalty. Again,

Administrators at Rikers Island claim today that their large prison colony is a “huge employment opportunity” for the South Bronx. While caging some 14,000 inmates across some 14 different jail units, Rikers employs 11,500 people as correctional officers or civilian staff.

The best advice I got came from a colleague I didn’t know very well—or at least, not well enough to know that she once had a boyfriend who had a drug problem. When she told me about her ex, I instantly recognized the relationship she described, the intensity of his affection eventually trumped by the upheaval of his constant drama. The way she put it seemed so simple: “I realized I had to choose his life or mine.” I understood that decision—it was exactly how I felt after I bailed Graham out of Rikers. But there was one question that still troubled me, more as a moral dilemma most of us don’t want to face: What happens to these addicts after the sober, sane people in their lives leave them? We all know the answer: Many of them don’t get better. We lock them up, or they overdose and die.