Top 180 Chanel Miller Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “There is a certain carefree feeling that was stripped from me the night of the assault. How to distinguish spontaneity from recklessness? How to prove nudity is not synonymous with promiscuity? Where’s the line between caution and paranoia? This is what I’m mourning, this is what I do not know how to get back.”

— Chanel Miller

52. “How many of us have been made to feel humiliated, melodramatic, instead of brilliant, brave. One man could have kept me from awakening millions. Question who your realities are being written by.”

— Chanel Miller

53. “History is where you will find people who have been through what you’re experiencing. Not only been there but survived it. Not only survived it but changed it. Whose struggles informed them. History shows you what people have endured before you.”

— Chanel Miller

54. “I’d been living with two teacups filled to the brim behind each eye, gotten used to a little spilling over every now and then.”

— Chanel Miller

55. “Whatever past you came from, you don’t have to go back.”

— Chanel Miller

56. “Question who your realities are being written by. Reexamine who dictates it. Who decides you are important.”

— Chanel Miller

57. “I knew I did not deserve help, because this was not real trauma. He was a kid, not a criminal. Accomplished, not dangerous. He was the one who lost everything. I was just the nobody it happened to.”

— Chanel Miller

58. “If a victim speaks but no one acknowledges her, does she make a sound?”

— Chanel Miller

59. “Maybe now you are terrified, bobbing inside the clear plastic container around you, thinking, I am trapped, this is not how it’s supposed to be. Just remember: the temperature is slowly changing, you are adjusting. You will make it into that pond. With a little more time, you’ll be free.”

— Chanel Miller

60. “I do not write to trigger victims. I write to comfort them, and I’ve found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes.”

— Chanel Miller

61. “When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given.”

— Chanel Miller

62. “I always wondered why survivors understood other survivors so well. Why, even if the details of our attacks vary, survivors can lock eyes and get it without having to explain. Perhaps it is not the particulars of the assault itself that we have in common, but the moment after; the first time you are left alone. Something slipping out of you. Where did I go. What was taken. It is terror swallowed inside silence. An unclipping from the world where up was up and down was down.”

— Chanel Miller

63. “What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.”

— Chanel Miller

64. “I hope you understand you are worth fighting for. Your character is not what caused your hurts to happen. You are not a statistic or a stereotype, so when they minimize you, dehumanize you, objectify you, you must push back with your whole weight, with your lifetime of experiences.”

— Chanel Miller

65. “My eyes became wet, I would cry in private, but I knew I would do what I had always done: detach, keep going.”

— Chanel Miller

66. “They were intent on collecting evidence, while I was trying to keep my life intact.”

— Chanel Miller

67. “And then, all the and thens ceased. Nothing remains to be done in the Order of time, when all is still.”

— Chanel Miller

68. “I did nothing wrong. I am strong. I have a voice. I told the truth.”

— Chanel Miller

69. “Who decides you are important. The judge was not God. He was one man, wearing a black smock, head of a small domain, ruler of a one-room kingdom on Grant Avenue. He was not the sole truth speaker, the rule maker, the final word. He was an elected official, voted out by 62 percent.”

— Chanel Miller

70. “This was my evidence that while my mind had been shriveling in anxiety, my heart had been busy, thankful to have been given a chance. I saw the part of me that insisted on surviving.”

— Chanel Miller

71. “Whether one agrees with the recall or not, the volunteers taught me something I will know for the rest of my life: the world is not fixed.”

— Chanel Miller

72. “I remembered learning that anger was a secondary emotion, the primary emotion was closer to pain.”

— Chanel Miller

73. “He may sit in a cell, but he will never know what it’s like to be unhomed from his own body. We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.”

— Chanel Miller

74. “He had given himself permission to enter me again, this time stuffing words into my mouth. He made me his real life ventriloquist doll, put his hands inside of me and made me speak.”

— Chanel Miller

75. “We may spend half our time wandering around, wondering what we’re even doing here, why it’s worth the effort. But living is an incredible thing, just to have been here, to have felt, if only briefly, the volume and depth of others’ empathy. I wrote, most of all, to tell you I have seen how good the world could be.”

— Chanel Miller

76. “The way I saw it, my side was going to convince the jury that the big yellow thing in the sky is the sun. His side had to convince the jury that it’s an egg yolk.”

— Chanel Miller

77. “Kicking and screaming is not a sign you have lost your mind. It’s a sign that you have stepped onto your own side. You are learning, finally, how to fight back. Rage had arrived to burn the timidness away.”

— Chanel Miller

78. “Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.”

— Chanel Miller

79. “I am a victim, I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that it is all that I am. However, I am not Brock Turner’s victim. I am not his anything. I don’t belong to him.”

— Chanel Miller

80. “Every day she reminds me of the Muttville slogan: It’s never too late for a new beginning. It was a promise to her and a promise to myself. Whatever past you came from, you don’t have to go back.”

— Chanel Miller

81. “Gone is the luxury of growing up slowly. So begins the brutal awakening.”

— Chanel Miller

82. “If punishment is based on potential, privileged people will be given lighter sentences. Brock was shielded inside projections of what people like him grow up to become, or are supposed to become. Orthopedic surgeon. Biomedical engineer. All-American Athlete. Olympian. The judge argued he’d already lost so much, given up so many opportunities. What happens to those who start off with little to lose?”

— Chanel Miller

83. “I felt the eyes taking me in. I wondered if they were surprised I was Asian, if I looked like a woman, or a girl, if I appeared mundane, less pretty than imagined, why didn’t he choose someone better looking, stop, what are you thinking, be quiet. As I stepped toward the witness stand.”

— Chanel Miller

84. “For years, the crime of sexual assault depended on our silence. The fear of knowing what happened if we spoke. Society gave us one thousand reasons; don’t speak if you lack evidence, if it happened too long ago, if you were drunk, if the man is powerful, if you’ll face blowback, if it threatens your safety. Ford broke all the rules. She had none of the requirements society tells us we need before we dare open our mouths.”

— Chanel Miller

85. “This time I wondered what behavior was acceptable for a victim. What tone? She warned me not to get angry. I learned that if you’re angry, you’re defensive. If you’re flat, you’re apathetic. Too upbeat, you’re suspect. If you weep, you’re hysterical. Being too emotional made you unreliable. But being unemotional made you unaffected. How should I balance it all?”

— Chanel Miller

86. “How easy it was to pretend. The slivers we show, the mountains we hide.”

— Chanel Miller

87. “Victims are often accused of seeking revenge, but revenge is a tiny engine. I know better than to think my peace arrives when the gavel hits, when the handcuffs click shut. He may sit in a cell, but he will never know what it’s like to be unhomed from his own body. We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.”

— Chanel Miller

88. “Trauma was refusing to adhere to any schedule, didn’t seem to align itself with time. Some days it was distant as a star and other days it could wholly engulf me.”

— Chanel Miller

89. “Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift.”

— Chanel Miller

90. “What they were really saying is, victims can’t write. Victims aren’t smart, capable, or independent. They need external help to articulate their thoughts, needs, and demands. They are too emotional to compose anything coherent. It cannot be the same drunk girl who was found unconscious, the one who the media said uncontrollably sobbed throughout testimony. On a deep level, they wanted to take away my writing, which I would not give up so easily.”

— Chanel Miller

91. “It took me a long time to learn healing is not about advancing, it is about returning repeatedly to forage something. Writing this book allowed me to go back to that place. I learned to stay in the hurt, to resist leaving... I assembled and reassembled letters in ways that would describe what I’d seen and felt. As I revisited that landscape, I grew more in control, could come and go when I needed to. Until one day I found there was nothing left to gather.”

— Chanel Miller

92. “No matter how formidable or self-assured I might become, I will always be a tadpole.”

— Chanel Miller

93. “You are more powerful than anyone who has ever hurt you. It is not pathetic to feel and react. You are stronger than you know, even if you can’t feel it yet.”

— Chanel Miller

94. “In court they’ll try to make you believe you are unlike the others, you are different, an exception. You are dirtier, more stupid, more promiscuous. But it’s a trick. The assault is never personal, the blaming is.”

— Chanel Miller

95. “The slivers we show, the mountains we hide.”

— Chanel Miller

96. “We were fighting for closure, for justice. It was not for me, but at the expense of me, that we’d be able to get there.”

— Chanel Miller

97. “When a victim does go for help, she is seen as attacking the assailant. These are separate; seeking aid is her primary motive, his fallout is a secondary effect. But we are taught, if you speak, something bad happens to him. You.”

— Chanel Miller

98. “On June 5, 2018, the judge was recalled. I remembered a quote from him in the San Francisco Chronicle: Women are frustrated by how they are treated by society, how they are treated by the criminal justice system. That passion is genuine. It needs to be expressed. Expressed was the wrong word. We the victims are tired of expression, I expressed a lot in his courtroom. The word we need is: acknowledged, taken into account, taken seriously.”

— Chanel Miller

99. “It also meant there was a population of victims in my vicinity, disguised in their everyday lives, going to work, refilling their coffee, eyes wide at night, waiting.”

— Chanel Miller

100. “Memory is often perceived as the victim’s weakness, but I believe memory is a victim’s greatest strength. Trauma provides a special way of moving through time; years fall away in an instant, we can summon terrorizing feelings as if they are happening in the present.”

— Chanel Miller