Top 90 Jessica Knoll Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Men who call women crazy are always the men who have first pushed them to the brink.”

— Jessica Knoll

2. “The patriarchy survives so long as women are pitted against one another. It is a threat to a man’s way of life when women gather, when they question the status quo, and when they inevitably start to resist it.”

— Jessica Knoll

3. “My anger is carbon monoxide, binding to pain, humiliation, and hurt, rendering them powerless. You would never know when you met me how angry I am. Like Ani, I sometimes feel like a wind-up doll. Turn my key and I will tell you what you want to hear. I will smile on cue. My anger is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. It’s completely toxic.”

— Jessica Knoll

4. “But faith doesn’t mean that to me anymore. Now it means someone seeing something in you that you don’t, and not giving up until you see it too.”

— Jessica Knoll

5. “I’ve tried to make sense of how someone who didn’t stalk his victims in advance ended up going after the best and the brightest. And I think that’s it, the thing they all had in common – a light that outshone his. He targets college campuses and sorority houses because he’s looking for the cream of the crop. He wants to extinguish us – we are the ones who remind him that he’s not that smart, not that good-looking, and there’s nothing particularly special about him.”

— Jessica Knoll

6. “Law enforcement would rather we remember a dull man as brilliant than take a good hard look at the role they played in this absolute sideshow, and I am sick to death of watching them in their pressed shirts and cowboy boots, in their comfortable leather interview chairs, in hugely successful and critically acclaimed crime documentaries, talking about the intelligence and charm and wiliness of an ordinary misogynist. This story is not that. The story is not that.”

— Jessica Knoll

7. “I’m a cold person... I’m selfish... I’m only capable of feeling about things that benefit me.”

— Jessica Knoll

8. “There were men who cracked their knuckles while divulging to me what they would do to the defendant if they got the chance, thinking this was somehow reassuring for me to hear. But all it did was make me realize that there wasn’t so big a difference between the man who brutalized Denise and half the men I passed every day on the street.”

— Jessica Knoll

9. “Taste, I had yet to learn, was the delicate balance between expensive and unassuming.”

— Jessica Knoll

10. “Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do and it’s a messy one at that.”

— Jessica Knoll

11. “Sisters are reliably good for two things: hating and loving.”

— Jessica Knoll

12. “It’s a certain kind of hell, confessing your most humiliating sexual secrets to a room full of hairy middle-aged men.”

— Jessica Knoll

13. “All my life, I’ve found it difficult to advocate for myself, to ask for what I want. I fear burdening people so much.”

— Jessica Knoll

14. “God has a plan for all of us and he knows the outcome before we’re even born.”

— Jessica Knoll

15. “Thank you for encouraging my imagination endlessly, for investing in my education and prioritizing it the way you did, even when it meant making sacrifices in your own life. Thank you for showing me through your own example of hard work and dedication what it means to be ambitious and to have a strong work ethic. I am truly the luckiest girl alive to have you two as parents. I would not be where I am without you.”

— Jessica Knoll

16. “I should do three things every day, but instead I sit, paralyzed in front of my computer, beating myself up for not doing three things every day like I promised myself I would. I’ve determined this is more time-consuming and stressful than actually doing the three goddamn things a day, and, therefore, I’m entitled to my fury.”

— Jessica Knoll

17. “I thought that by twenty-eight I could stop trying to prove myself and relax already. But this fight just gets bloodier with age.”

— Jessica Knoll

18. “It’s okay to be insufferable as long as you’re aware that you’re being insufferable.”

— Jessica Knoll

19. “I’d read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. My favorite strategy is to feign inferiority and encourage my enemy’s arrogance.”

— Jessica Knoll

20. “It was eighteen hours ago that I discovered what the slimy inside of a brain looks like, what a face looks like without skin and lips and the odd pimple.”

— Jessica Knoll

21. “In a clear voice, Mrs. Ross said, “This may be where we mark Liam’s time with us, but I don’t want you to think this is where you have to come to think about Liam.” She held the vase close to her chest. “Think about him always.” Her mouth puckered. “Anywhere.”

— Jessica Knoll

22. “They will call you hysterical no matter how much dignity you have. So you might as well do whatever the hell you want.”

— Jessica Knoll

23. “Education, travel, culture – this is what any pennies pinched should be used for, never flashy cars, loud logos, or personal maintenance.”

— Jessica Knoll

24. “It was one of those awful moments where you have no control over your reaction, when the pain is too exposed to hide.”

— Jessica Knoll

25. “It is a dangerous thing to conflate feminism with liking all women. It limits women to being one thing, likable, when feminism is about allowing women to be all shades of all things, even if that thing is a snake oil saleswoman.”

— Jessica Knoll

26. “The meta-moment of experiencing how the rest of the world sees you, because the salty girl is you.”

— Jessica Knoll

27. “Sometimes I feel like a windup doll, like I have to reach behind and turn my golden key to produce a greeting, a laugh, whatever the socially acceptable reaction should be.”

— Jessica Knoll

28. “It was a hard thing to do, apologize, but I’ve done harder things.”

— Jessica Knoll

29. “Now it means someone seeing something in you that you don’t, and not giving up until you see it too. I want that. I miss that.”

— Jessica Knoll

30. “She could have braked. She could have not worn such a short skirt. She could have not gone up to his room. She could have not laughed at him and made him feel small. There is a blitheness to the statement, a maleness to it that sets me straight.”

— Jessica Knoll

31. “I don’t crave martinis the way I do, say, an economy-size bag of chocolate-covered pretzels, but when I need a warm blur to descend on me, and fast, it’s my elixir of choice.”

— Jessica Knoll

32. “We were broke, Mom signing up for new credit cards every other month to finance her Bloomingdale’s excursions, while the shoddy Sheetrock walls of our dramatic McMansion went rank with mildew we couldn’t “afford” to have removed.”

— Jessica Knoll

33. “Luke was so perfect, he made me fearless. Because how could anything bad happen around a person like that?”

— Jessica Knoll

34. “I feel anger and hatred and frustration and sadness like they’re physical fabrics. This one’s silk, this one’s velvet, this one’s crisp cotton. But I couldn’t tell you what the texture of loving Luke is anymore.”

— Jessica Knoll

35. “This is how society keeps us out of the C-suite – it booby-traps the way to the top with self-loathing, then reroutes us on a never-ending path of self-improvement.”

— Jessica Knoll

36. “I wrapped myself in the flimsy hospital gown and tiptoed across the hospital room to sit down on the hospital bed, holding my arms across my chest, trying to contain my breasts. They seemed enormous and unpredictable without a bra.”

— Jessica Knoll

37. “Right here, right now, I want you to forget two things: he was nothing special, and what happened was not random.”

— Jessica Knoll

38. “The last thing the world needs is one more woman with principles. What we need is women with money. Women with money have flexibility, and nothing is more dangerous than a woman who can bend any way she wants.”

— Jessica Knoll

39. “Hot pink, I’m sure she spent a few minutes debating it – was she tan enough, maybe the navy silky sleeveless top instead, can’t go wrong with navy – and over her shoulder, a cognac Prada the exact same shade as her shoes, the perfect match more age revealing than the skin starting to pucker in her neck. She had at least ten years on me, I determined, relieved.”

— Jessica Knoll

40. “You might think someone like Hallsy would only be inclined to torture someone like me, but if she did that, it would be an admission of her own aesthetic shortcomings.”

— Jessica Knoll

41. “The more sacred a piece of information, the more desperate the gatekeeper is to reveal it, the harder you have to work to relieve her of the burden.”

— Jessica Knoll

42. “That would be the most surprising lesson I’d learn at Bradley: You only scream when you’re finally safe.”

— Jessica Knoll

43. “Arthur sighed heavily, like he was sorry he ever brought it up, but I knew he wasn’t. The more sacred a piece of information, the more desperate the gatekeeper is to reveal it, the harder you have to work to relieve her of the burden. That way she doesn’t feel horribly guilty about betraying confidences – what could she do? She was browbeaten into it!”

— Jessica Knoll

44. “This was my fourth summer with Luke, and every year I watched as all that good, healthy outdoor activity – running, surfing, golfing, kite boarding – multiplied the golden flecks on his nose like cancer cells.”

— Jessica Knoll

45. “Reality TV is like driving drunk. You know it might kill you, but there is something rakishly sexy about tempting the fates.”

— Jessica Knoll

46. “My favorite strategy is to feign inferiority and encourage my enemy’s arrogance.”

— Jessica Knoll

47. “The attack wasn’t just about getting back at his tormentors, or about revenge, it was about his contempt.”

— Jessica Knoll

48. “Bickering. It’s so much uglier than a heated, dish-smashing fight, isn’t it?”

— Jessica Knoll

49. “First semester, I learned that Jack Rogers sandals, so revered in college, screamed, “My small liberal arts school will always be the center of the universe!” I’d found a new axis, so into the trash went my gold, silver, and white pairs.”

— Jessica Knoll

50. “There are times I’m on the subway and it’s so packed I can’t escape the legs on my left and right. New Yorkers rage about this forced physical contact, but I secretly savor it, so soothed by the heat generated between bodies I could fall asleep on the shoulder of a stranger.”

— Jessica Knoll