Top 180 Chanel Miller Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Victims receive heat when given any sum. Few acknowledge that healing is costly. That we should be allocating more funds for victims, for therapy, extra security, potential moving costs, getting back on their feet, buying something as simple as court clothes. As Michele pointed out, Preventing assault is so much cheaper than trying to address it after the fact.”

— Chanel Miller

152. “Verbal consent is often mocked for killing the mood. But think of how much organic communication we do in life. A sampling table at the grocery store; you pick up a cracker, make eye contact with the vendor, May I? and they nod, Enjoy. Subtle and swift.”

— Chanel Miller

153. “These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. He spoke of the verdicts as if they were a disease that had befallen them. Verdict of what? Guilt. Guilt for what? Assault. Assault committed by whom? Brock. Your son has broken and shattered your family. But he could never say that.”

— Chanel Miller

154. “The girl running arms wide into the ocean is gone. In her place is a woman wrapped in two coats, staring at the black water, mistaking lumps of seaweed for dormant bodies, the stones for crouching men.”

— Chanel Miller

155. “Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.”

— Chanel Miller

156. “I watched a man approach Alaleh, a neon-orange sticker on his shirt that said JURY and thought it was funny jury members were walking around labeled like Chiquita bananas.”

— Chanel Miller

157. “When I speak in opposition, I am grateful my voice is uncensored. I do not take my freedom of speech, my abundance of books, my access to education, my ease of first language for granted.”

— Chanel Miller

158. “Women have been trained to notice micro movements. To scan and anticipate all subsequent actions, constantly measuring how far threatening words are from realities. We are tasked with defending ourselves in every imaginable scenario, planning escape routes, walking with keys between knuckles, a natural instinct in our day to day routines.”

— Chanel Miller

159. “Mama bought 4 different kinds of ice cream for you!”

— Chanel Miller

160. “I learned it was expensive to be assaulted.”

— Chanel Miller

161. “I did know that I wasn’t going to let the fear of what men might do dictate what the rest of my life was going to be.”

— Chanel Miller

162. “I had grown up in the margins; in the media Asian Americans were assigned side roles, submissive, soft-spoken secondary characters. I had grown used to being unseen, to never being fully known.”

— Chanel Miller

163. “Denying darkness does not bring anyone closer to the light.”

— Chanel Miller

164. “Remember who you are, what you like about yourself.”

— Chanel Miller

165. “As a survivor, I feel a duty to provide a realistic view of the complexity of recovery. I am not here to rebrand the mess he made on campus. It is not my responsibility to alchemize what he did into healing words society can digest. I do not exist to be the eternal flame, the beacon, the flowers that bloom in your garden.”

— Chanel Miller

166. “This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for.”

— Chanel Miller

167. “If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.”

— Chanel Miller

168. “Assault buries the self. We lose sight of how and when we are allowed to occupy space. We are made to doubt our abilities, disparaged when we speak.”

— Chanel Miller

169. “I pulled out my small red notebook. I illuminated the pages with my phone, and wrote, I feel like I’ve already won. It was a small nod to myself; I had done the impossible, showed up. Those who watched me cry on the stand might have perceived me as fragile, but I believed it to be the quiet beginning of my strength.”

— Chanel Miller

170. “At twenty-two I was beginning to wonder if adulthood was just a series of endless losses. What benefits were there to growing up? How do you feel all these heavy things for the rest of your life?”

— Chanel Miller

171. “For so long I believed history was a thick book you carried around in your backpack, not something you could create.”

— Chanel Miller

172. “If you get through this night, you are promised to survive all the days ahead.”

— Chanel Miller

173. “One man could have kept me from awakening millions. Question who your realities are being written by. Reexamine who dictates it. Who decides you are important. The judge was not God.”

— Chanel Miller

174. “But I also knew this feeling would not be infinite. As soon as the sun came up, the worst would be behind me.”

— Chanel Miller

175. “I began to belong more to my present than my past. I was no longer trying to get somewhere, only asking myself, Are you improving? Sometimes the answer was not today. Sometimes I was regressing. But the voice in my head was now gentler. Whatever the answer, I was patient and understanding.”

— Chanel Miller

176. “My purpose will always be greater than my fear.”

— Chanel Miller

177. “The thing about victims is that they wake up. Maybe you thought I’d never be able to go through with this.”

— Chanel Miller

178. “When we think of people fitting together, we may think of a man inserting himself into a woman, but there are many ways we overlook. The way ears are thin as construction paper, allowing me to press the side of my face against his chest. Fingers can be interlaced without getting tangled. One hand can create a tiny chair for one chin. We are designed to bend and fold, to comfort ourselves and each other. We have so many small parts that need tending to.”

— Chanel Miller

179. “I read comments that laughed at my pain. I remember feeling helpless, terrified, humiliated, I cried like I’ve never cried before. But I remember the attorney’s still shoulders as guilty was read. I know Brock slept ninety days in a stiff cot in a jail cell. The judge will never step foot in a courtroom again. The appellate attorney’s claims were shut down. One by one, they became powerless, fell away, and when the dust settled, I looked around to see who was left. Only Emily Doe.”

— Chanel Miller

180. “If I have forgiven him, it’s not because I’m holy. It’s because I need to clear a space inside myself where hard feelings can be put to rest.”

— Chanel Miller

181. “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.”

— Chanel Miller

182. “Something else was happening that I’d recognized in the hearing; the frequency of the word right. He’d planted answers in his questions rather than leave them open ended: Right? Isn’t that right? Correct? Right? To an observer, it would seem he was just verifying facts. But so much of it had not been right.”

— Chanel Miller

183. “My job is to observe, feel, document, report. What am I learning and seeing that other people can’t see? What doorways does my suffering lead to?”

— Chanel Miller

184. “He stated that when he saw Deputy Shaw approach, he made the decision to run. While running, he heard the verbal commands to stop, but continued evading. He said it was a split-second decision and he regretted making it. Deputy Shaw would be the one to photograph my body three months after this incident.”

— Chanel Miller

185. “In the past year, snow had fallen and melted, my hair had been cut and grown, the world kept moving, and I could’ve continued to move on with it, yet I had returned. What did it mean, that I kept finding myself in this tiny room, abandoning an orderly life to keep fighting. Didn’t this count for something?”

— Chanel Miller

186. “Society often fails to wrap its head around the fact that these truths often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person.”

— Chanel Miller

187. “Pain, when examined closely, became clarity.”

— Chanel Miller

188. “When I was little, I never asked anyone if I was an artist. I just cleared enough space on the table to make room for my paper.”

— Chanel Miller