Home > Author > Jonathan R. Miller
1 " 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
2 " You are not responsible for the past, but insofar as you do nothing, you are complicit in the present created by it. "
3 " You can't always choose which. Sometimes you have to BE which. "
4 " 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. "
5 " It's baffling how some people whose ancestors carved up the world with knives are now worried about defending their piece from the 'outsiders. "
6 " 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. "
7 " 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 , Gravity Breaker
8 " 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 , The Two Levels
9 " 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 , The Mortis
10 " Eventually I was ready to learn how to perform routine life tasks again. 'Enabling occupation'—that’s what the learning process was called when it was presented to me. Enabling occupation involved the mastery of skills that I didn’t even know could properly be called 'skills.' How to pick up and carry and manipulate a set of common objects: a handbag, a stoneware saucer, a mobile phone, a paperback book. I was told that my new limbs were capable of hefting an automobile, of bending an iron bar, but I couldn’t make them do any of these magical things—not anything remotely close. Instead, I spent my days trying to pick up a thumbtack from a hard surface using my feeble pincer grasp, to activate a light switch with a single articulated finger, and to fasten a long line of shirt buttons, each of which was around the size of a half-dollar coin. During this period, I worked to improve my gross motor skills in parallel. I relearned how to reach for distant objects without collapsing under my own weight, how to twist a standard brass doorknob, and how to pour liquid from a plastic pitcher into a paper cup without spilling everything everywhere or crushing the handle itself in my grip. Eventually I used these newfound skills to practice clothing myself in simple blouses with velcro fasteners and pants with elastic waistbands, struggling to take it all off again when it was time. At some point during this phase, a team of nameless staff members helped me stand upright in front of a full-length mirror so I could stare at my newly-made body, fully exposed, and with my sharpened vision I was able to see the true extent of my transformation, the exquisite atrocity I’d chosen to perpetrate. "
― Jonathan R. Miller , Frend
11 " NO BITCHING" - Drizz "
12 " Outside, Ambo slogs through snow ankle-deep, making bloody tracks down the graded yard toward the box truck. Scanning the roundabout below, where the dirt utility road spills from the wood into the clearing. No movement. Nothing on approach. Only the snow that contours the turnabout, shaping itself against the trunks of the surrounding glade. Near the split-rail fence at the end of the back yard, Ambo stops and places the cooler at his feet. He lays the shotgun in a wide drift beside the last stile, working it in with his hands, using the snow to scour off the worst of the gore. The slush reddened like a confection. When he finishes, he puts the cooler under his arm, shoulders the weapon and continues the descent. His hands numb. The truck is ahead, blanketed from nose to tail, the drifts reaching halfway into the wheel wells. When Ambo reaches the cargo bay, he glances back over his shoulder. The red house, a cornice of snow gathered on the eaves. The red tracks—his own footprints—leading away. A red imprint roughed out in the shape of a gun on the side of the path. "
― Jonathan R. Miller , Delivery
13 " 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? "
14 " 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. "
15 " Without making a conscious decision to do so, I’d already modified my bearing, my stride, and my facial expression to broadcast what I’d come to believe (through years of trial and error) were signals of civility and normalcy in the eyes of the general public. Although I was practiced at the art of adapting myself in this way, it was still frustrating—even now—to feel as though I had no real choice in the matter, especially when my focus should have been on more important things than making myself palatable to the world at large. I hated the fact that my mind contained a dedicated block of memory reserved for just this very purpose. I couldn’t help but wonder—what greater purpose could that area of my mind have served, in an ideal world, if it had been freed? "
16 " 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. "
