Bruce Perry from his biography of Malcolm X

“In his correspondence and later in his autobiography, Malcolm described his incarceration, which he characterized as ‘fortunate,’ as a liberating experience. ‘Do not picture us as being in prison,’ he wrote. 'I was in prison before entering here …. The solitude, the long moments of meditative contemplation, have given me the key to my freedom.'

He said it was unlikely he could have liberated himself any other way. He also said he felt more contented in jail than people who live outside prison walls do. Perhaps it was the contentment of a man who had been liberated from the nagging tyranny of a guilty conscience….his withdrawal into a walled sanctuary afforded him not only the respite that enabled him to educate himself, but also the security that enabled him to muster the strength for battles to come.”