Top 120 Jessica Knoll Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “The meta-moment of experiencing how the rest of the world sees you, because the salty girl is you.”

— Jessica Knoll

52. “He imagined the future I could have before I even wanted it for myself, and he was the one to push me toward it. That’s faith. Growing up, I thought faith was about believing Jesus died for us, and that if I held on to that, I’d get to meet him when I died too. 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. I want that. I miss that.”

— Jessica Knoll

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

— Jessica Knoll

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

— Jessica Knoll

55. “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

56. “I think you know when two people are meant for each other when you see that they’re better people together than they are when they’re apart.”

— Jessica Knoll

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “I was so glad summer was over. I hated it, always had.”

— Jessica Knoll

61. “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. As long as I deferred to her, it was in her best interest to embrace me. It sent the message that there was no need to be jealous or intimidated – she was every bit as desirable as an overaerobicized twenty-something.”

— Jessica Knoll

62. “There comes a point where you just can’t be mad at everyone anymore.”

— Jessica Knoll

63. “The thinking that women of all shapes and sizes can be beautiful is still hugely problematic, because it is predicated on the idea that the most important thing a woman has to offer the world is her appearance. Men are raised to worry about their legacies, not their upper arm and thigh fat, stretch marks, crows-feet, saggy elbows, ugly armpits, thin eyelashes, and normal-smelling genitals.”

— Jessica Knoll

64. “I despised Judge Lambert with every fiber of my being, the way he addressed me as ma’am and The Defendant as young man, then later as cowboy, compadre, partner. I was twenty-three years old to The Defendant’s thirty-two. I had earned top marks in my first year of law school. I was the young woman, the compadre, closer to his equal than The Defendant, but you never would have known it by the way the judge spoke to him.”

— Jessica Knoll

65. “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

66. “I was surprised how sad it made me to leave the hospital, to see the people hurrying to work, the men in their dry-cleaned suits, the women driving their kids to the public school, cursing because they missed the light at Montgomery and Morris Ave and now they were going to be late. Knowing that when you’re gone the grind will go on. No one is special enough to stop it.”

— Jessica Knoll

67. “It was subtle discouragement by neglect, what the author called “motivational malnutrition.” I thought about that phrase – motivational malnutrition.”

— Jessica Knoll

68. “Isn’t that the secret sauce of seduction? First the snare of mystery, then the distinctly female instinct to rehabilitate.”

— Jessica Knoll

69. “We’re women. Not girls. I am a twenty-seven-year-old pioneer in the wellness space who reincorporated her company as a B-corp without needing to hire a lawyer. Would you refer to my male equivalent as a boy?”

— Jessica Knoll

70. “Things grow differently when they’re damaged, showing us how to occupy strange new ground to bloom red instead of green. We can be found, brighter than before.”

— Jessica Knoll

71. “Truly, when I look back on my childhood, one emotion beats brightly and loudly above the rest: dread. I was shown love when I followed the rules, and I was deprived of love when I did not, and how I dreaded those times when I did not. Kids should be disciplined, but they should never be unloved.”

— Jessica Knoll

72. “My parents spent a lot of money to neglect me, and I was always fantasizing about something awful happening that would force them to take care of me in ways money cannot.”

— Jessica Knoll

73. “I stood staring at the freshly made bed, thinking about how much of my life I’d spent feeling simultaneously like a child and the only adult in the room. Why couldn’t people just do their jobs? Why was it that I could rely only on myself?”

— Jessica Knoll

74. “I don’t have a problem pitying rich people. There are a lot of sad things in this world, and getting everything you want only to realize you are still empty inside is certainly one of them.”

— Jessica Knoll

75. “Hemingway used to write an ending to his novel only to delete it, asserting that it made the story stronger because the reader would always be able to intuit the ghost of that final, incorporeal passage.”

— Jessica Knoll

76. “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.”

— Jessica Knoll

77. “Absurdly, I placed an order for a Venti Chai Latte while Judge Lambert famously told The Defendant that someday soon a current of electricity would pass through his body until he was pronounced dead by the warden, and that he should, even more absurdly, take care of himself.”

— Jessica Knoll

78. “By the end of it all I just assumed no one ever told the truth, and that was when I started lying too.”

— Jessica Knoll

79. “The Defendant did not like to be told what to do and when to do it and once jammed his jail cell keyhole with toilet paper so the guards couldn’t get in when they arrived to escort him to his arraignment. For this he was called cunning and clever, though I had a dog who also tore up toilet paper when he didn’t get enough attention.”

— Jessica Knoll

80. “Tina and I stared at each other for a long time after Shirley left, incredulous but also not. There should be a word for that. How very little people can surprise you. I suppose the word is jaded, but that’s not what I am. Because on the other side of this is someone like Tina, who taught me not to be surprised that people can be so good you will miss a week of work, drive through the night, and put yourself in harm’s way for them. Some people are your black swan event.”

— Jessica Knoll

81. “He was rummaging around in there but looked up as I approached. “Hey,” he said. “Hi.” “My glasses,” he said by way of explanation.”

— Jessica Knoll

82. “Maybe he wouldn’t fear my bite, my kookiness, maybe he’d get past my thorny bristles to see there is sweetness here. Would understand that moving on doesn’t mean never talking about it, never crying about it... Or hurt about it. It’s always going to hurt.”

— Jessica Knoll

83. “I couldn’t decide which was worse – going gentle into that mom-jeans-wearing night, or fighting it, Botoxed and hungry, every step of the way.”

— Jessica Knoll

84. “Impossible grief is grief that does not adhere to a social contract of justice or human rituals that have existed since the dawn of time.”

— Jessica Knoll

85. “Knowing that when you’re gone the grind will go on. No one is special enough to stop it.”

— Jessica Knoll

86. “It must sound stupid, but it was I realized that for rest of my life, till death do us part, it was on me to maintain this veneer’s sparkly free, streak-free shine.”

— Jessica Knoll

87. “There was no way to tell which of us was there to ogle the Kennedy of Killers and which to testify against the booger-eating alcoholic who had picked up a heroin habit on the inside.”

— Jessica Knoll

88. “I carry you like my own personal Time Machine, as I put on my lipstick, smile, and head out to the party. It’s a line by one of her favorite poets, a woman named Donna Carnes, whose husband went out for a sail in San Francisco Bay and has not been seen since. I love it too. How many parties have I gone to over the years, and laughed, and had a good time, while still managing to hold Denise close?”

— Jessica Knoll

89. “There’s only so much lying around on a beach you can do before you lose it.”

— Jessica Knoll

90. “Healthy people are people who feel connected to their communities, who are loved and supported by those around them, and who have a sense of purpose in their lives. Healthy women do not waste their precious energy separating egg whites from egg yolks.”

— Jessica Knoll

91. “There have always been serial killers – in the sixteenth century, they were put on trial as werewolves. There are women serial killers who amass their victims by manipulating others to do their dirty work, and Black serial killers whom we rarely hear about not because they are Black but because their victims are.”

— Jessica Knoll

92. “I traced my finger over the smooth wood surface, considering how sharp the chain saw must have been for the amputation to be this clean. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to draw attention to my connection with Arthur if he was more marginalized than I thought. This was a serious accusation. “Who’s Ben Hunter?” I asked, trying to stall while I worked out this new piece of information.”

— Jessica Knoll

93. “In seventeen months, I would relish repeating this description for a courtroom. I’d had about enough of hearing how handsome he was, and no man likes to be called small.”

— Jessica Knoll

94. “You only scream when you’re finally safe.”

— Jessica Knoll

95. “Her smile revealed a row of coffee-drinker teeth behind a coat of Chanel lipstick.”

— Jessica Knoll

96. “The Philadelphia Inquirer, would I? “Let’s not delay the inevitable.” Dan put his hand on my shoulder, and I stared at the floor, at his shoes made of such bad fake leather they looked rubber. “You did good in there,” Dan said. “Vencino is a bully. He’s just trying to get under your skin. But you didn’t rise to the occasion. That was good.” “But they think I planned this with Arthur or something,” I said. “How could they think that?” “They don’t,” Dan said. “Like your.”

— Jessica Knoll

97. “It made me feel diseased, how little I seemed to want the things that other women my age did without complication.”

— Jessica Knoll

98. “Tina turned the key, put the car back in reverse, and bulldozed Carl’s mailbox cleanly to the ground before driving off at a leisurely Sunday speed.”

— Jessica Knoll

99. “We had been performing the same dance all our lives – one in which I asked for little and received even less.”

— Jessica Knoll

100. “I want to be a writer, which sounds so stupid and aspirational, like, ‘I want to be an astronaut!”

— Jessica Knoll