Sam J. Miller > Quotes

“I used to imagine Better was a place you could get to. A moment when I would look around and see that Everything Was Fine. But that’s not how this works. Being better isn’t a battle you fight and win. Feeling okay is a war, one that lasts your whole life, and the only way to win is to keep on fighting.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“We want villains. We look for them everywhere. People to pin our misfortunate on. Whose sins and flaws are responsible for all the suffering we see. We want a world where the real monstrosity lies in wicked individuals. Instead of being a fundamental facet of human society, of the human heart.

Stories prime us to search for villains. Because villains can be punished. Villains can be stopped.

But villains are oversimplifications.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“The strongest people aren’t the ones who are born strong. They’re the ones who know what it’s like to be weak, and have a reason to get stronger. The ones who’ve been hurt. Who’ve had things they love taken from them. The ones with something to fight for.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“The greatest power comes from love, from knowing who you are and standing proudly in it.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Congratulations! You have acquired one human body. This was a poor decision, but it is probably too late for you to do anything about it. Life, alas, has an extremely strict return policy.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Depending on what the body you’re born into looks like, you get put in a box marked either Boy or Girl. That box is packed with expectations and requirements, demands and obligations. The box says you can like This, but not That. The box says you can wear This, but not That. The box might fit you perfectly. In that case, everything will be wonderful. Alternately, the box might be so cramped and tight and full of horrible things that you’d rather be dead than spend another minute in it.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Fine line between good business and a fucking war crime,” he said. “Ain’t that the goddamn epitaph of capitalism.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“I still wasn't entirely convinced that if somebody suddenly gave me the power to snap my fingers and cease to exist, I wouldn't use it.

I wasn't suicidal anymore. But once you go there, once your mind has seriously weighed it as a possibility, it never really goes away. It's always there - always an option.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Without your problems, you wouldn’t be who you are. You would be someone else. Someone significantly less awesome.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Straight men will insult and assault and beat and kill gay men because they are terrified. Because masculinity is the foundation they built their whole worldview on, the set of lies that lets them believe they are inherently better than women, and gay people expose how flimsy and arbitrary the whole thing is.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Stories are where we find ourselves, where we find the others who are like us. Gather enough stories and soon you're not alone; you are an army.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“Bad things will happen to you and they won’t be your fault. Life is a miserable shit-show for lots of very good people. Lots of very evil people have it easy in life. When bad things happen, it doesn’t help to blame yourself, or wish you’d done something differently, or shake your fists at the sky. Accept that the bad things happened, but do not allow them to continue to hurt you. Bad things will also happen to you that will be your fault. Part of being Better is being able to tell the difference.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“She thinks I’m a child who needs to be protected from the horrors of grown-ups, because she somehow forgot that the world of children has its own horrors. And that the world of teenagers holds the horrors of both.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Every superhero, every Chosen One, goes through a painful and difficult process of Becoming. On this, all the relevant literature is in agreement. Ask any comic book aficionado, any movie buff. The heroes doubt themselves, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence. They've spent their whole lives listening to weak and powerless people who hate and fear anything that is different, who say that superhuman abilities simply don't exist, and they believe it.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Silence was my sister's weapon. When people hurt or angered her, she never got loud like Mom or mean and smart-ass like me. Silence was how she fought back. It wasn't passive, or an act of helplessness: it was a cold cruel withering blade, lasting far longer than my mother's rage or my own antagonism, strong enough to make us practically beg for forgiveness every time.

Except now her weapon had gone haywire, turned on herself, driven her from her home and her support system and into what-knew-what kind of danger.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“This is the hardest rule. The one I still have to keep repeating. The one I accept, on an intellectual level, but still cannot truly believe. Your body is just a thing. Whether it’s strong or weak or beautiful or ugly is all in your head. In your mind.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“As they approach true mastery of the Art of Starving, students will see that eating disorders are merely one part of a broad spectrum of self-harm. Cutting, addiction, suicidal ideation. These are all ways to assert your power. To prove that you're not weak. To show you're strong enough to control your own destiny by destroying yourself.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“Money is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, its programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn't care if it kills its host.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“Slums are always a marvel; how human desperation can seem to warp the very laws of physics.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“When had he become adult enough to give into childish joy?”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“And anyway, lots of things had never been done before, and then they were done.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“When the worst thing that can possibly happen to you finally happens, you find that you are not afraid of anything.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“Every city is a war. A thousand fights being fought between a hundred groups. Rich, poor, old, young, born-here, and not-born-here. The followers of this god and the followers of that one. Someone will have the upper hand in each of these battles. Those people will make the rules, whether they're administered by priests or soldiers or politicians or programs. Fixing this is hard. Put new people in power, write new laws, erase old ones, build cities out of nothingness - but the wars remain, the underlying conflicts are unaffected. Only power shifts the scales, and people build power only when they come together. When they find in each other the strength to stop being afraid”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“America has fallen and I don't feel so good myself.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“The poor woman. She couldn’t help what she was. It took a special sort of insanity to run for public office. A fragile megalomania; a delusional ego.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“The lack of imagination among the rich was its own kind of machine, its own species of artificial intelligence.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“Should you ever need a reminder of what a savage animal your body is—should you ever start to doubt that you are chained to a wild creature—just hurt someone. Hurt them bad. And see how your body feels after.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“dissolution syndrome (IDS) or multiplicative affiliation disorder (MAD)? Epidemics do not have medical causes; they have social ones. I have been stitching its story together here.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“Everyone can afford to be nice to each other, when no one is trying to exterminate anybody.”
― Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City

“Don’t the stars make you feel so small?” Bastien said, and there was a slight roughness around his words from where his lip was already swollen.
“People always say that,” Ott said. “I don’t understand it. The stars make me feel . . .” I could hear the gears turning, the struggle as Ott tried to cram the whole huge tapestry of his thoughts into the meager words of his vocabulary. “They make me feel big. A giant cosmic accident. Like—what are the chances that I would even happen? You know? If my parents hadn’t met, if the dinosaurs never died out . . . we might not be here. But here we are. And we get to look up at the stars at night. Who would appreciate them if we didn’t?”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving