Chanel Miller Quotes

“I am a victim, I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that it is all that I am.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“Some called it a witch hunt, said she’s after him. I ask, starting when. Mark the day. Trace it back. I can almost guarantee that after the assault she tried to live her life. Ask her what she did the next day and she’d say, well, I went to work. She didn’t pick up a pitchfork, hire a lawyer. She made her bed, buttoned up her shirt, took shower after shower. She tried to believe she was unchanged, to move on until her legs gave out. Every woman who spoke out did so because she hit a point where she could no longer live another day in the life she tried to build. So she turned, slowly, back around to face it. Society thinks we live to come after him. When in fact, we live to live. That’s it. He upended that life, and we tried to keep going, but couldn’t. 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, Know My Name

“If you get through this night, you are promised to survive all the days ahead.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“I wanted to explain that Chanel’s social life was healthy and well populated, but it was lonely being Emily Doe, my world much smaller, a shrunken circle of confidants. I wondered how it happened that I was now spending more time with my rapist than my friends.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“Being questioned by the defense was stifling. He didn’t want to open up the emotional territory that she (the DA) did; he wanted to smother it, to erase my specific experience, abstract me into stereotypes of partying and blackouts, to ask technical questions that tied my shoelaces together, tripping me as he forced me to run.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name