Jonathan R. Miller Quotes & Sayings

Mistakes from our collective past are like any other: they require intervention--a remedy--to correct. They don't erase themselves over time. — Jonathan R. Miller

You can't always choose which. Sometimes you have to BE which. — Jonathan R. Miller

If you see a group of people struggling over generations and you attribute those struggles to bad character, then you do not truly believe we are all created equally. — Jonathan R. Miller

For the first time in my memory I felt a sense of power: an inborn power that couldn't be stripped away, that wasn't a function of another man's arbitrary whims, and that set me apart from - and above - everyone else that I was aware of. A power completely independent of the social order of things. A native power. I felt truly in control of my circumstances - truly safe from the raging violence of the world - perhaps for the first time in my thirty-some years of living. — Jonathan R. Miller

NO BITCHING" - Drizz — Jonathan R. Miller

You are not responsible for the past, but insofar as you do nothing, you are complicit in the present created by it. — Jonathan R. Miller

She looks out at the woods through the screen of limbs. Watching in the same way he is, for the same terrible things he is, with the same expectation, with equally haunted, hollow eyes. She's still gripping the butcher's cleaver tightly and her knuckles show through the skin. He puts a hand gently on hers. I think we're good, he says to her. It's gone. We're good.

She doesn't say anything. She just stares awhile. Clutching that glinting meat hatchet in a tight, mudded fist. The whites of her teeth and eyes in the dark. There is no good, she tells him. Not for us. There's only being ready for the next bad thing coming. — Jonathan R. Miller

Park is faster, but their pursuit seems almost ideological - a matter of committed belief. It's as though they were appointed to the task of laying hands on him, of bringing him back into the gentle fold, of taking him home.

They follow him all the way down to the ground floor. He bursts through the stairwell door, sprints down the hall, and ducks into an alcove where two vending machines stand gutted, their weighty doors cracked opened with a prybar. He wedges his body between them, pulls the knife and crouches down. His pulse is throbbing. He struggles to regain his breath, to silence himself. — Jonathan R. Miller

I run as fast as I can.

I make my way to the Employee Only exit and burst through, entering the main mall, gripping the backpack straps with both hands.

I don't see anyone else.

Some light from the sun is still shining through the skylights, making long shadows out of everything - the signs, the benches, the railing above me.

I run down the middle of the first-floor walkway, searching desperately for a way up to the second level. — Jonathan R. Miller

Having privilege means that you have worked hard, but in a world more likely to enable, recognize, and financially reward hard work; that you have suffered, but in a world with fewer forms of suffering, with more mechanisms to prevent it, and stronger remedies when it occurs; that you are not responsible for the atrocities committed by your people in the past, but insofar as you do nothing today, you are complicit in the present created by them. — Jonathan R. Miller

It's baffling how some people whose ancestors carved up the world with knives are now worried about defending their piece from the 'outsiders. — Jonathan R. Miller

They lie in bed and recount everything they've experienced over the course of the past forty-eight hours. Debating the meaning of it all, if there is one. They try to determine whether this series of events is just a result of temporary bad fortune - an anomaly - or whether it's a sign of a truly bad thing coming, something catastrophic. As is often the case, they find themselves arguing opposite sides: he says it's going to be okay, and she says it's not, that nothing will ever be the same again. They defend their positions for a while and then they switch. — Jonathan R. Miller

Ambo opens his eyes and snaps to awareness - looking around wildly. He tries to move his hands, but he can't; his wrists have been bound to a wooden armchair. It takes him a moment to recognize it, to remember how he got there.

Arla is standing next to him, looking withered. Skin mottled and sweaty. Her eyes are swollen, and the cloth of the hijab has unraveled slightly. She whispers something to him, and it sounds like she's asking whether he's okay, but he can't make out the words.

He tells her to repeat herself. Louder this time, child.

'I said, what are we going to do? — Jonathan R. Miller