Top 90 Jessica Knoll Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 2 of 2

51. “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

52. “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

53. “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

54. “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

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

— Jessica Knoll

56. “But I needed to build up my loneliness tolerance, was all. The loneliness became like a friend, my constant companion. I could depend on it, and only it.”

— Jessica Knoll

57. “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

58. “I saw how there was a protection in success, and success was defined by threatening the minion on the other end of a cell phone, expensive pumps terrorizing the city, people stepping out of your way simply because you looked like you had more important places to be than they did. Somewhere along the way, a man got tangled up in this definition too. I just had to get to that, I decided, and no one could hurt me again.”

— Jessica Knoll

59. “Women’s Magazine, “A study found that the act of physically closing your menu once you’ve decided what to order can make you feel more satisfied with your choice.”

— Jessica Knoll

60. “You’re showing young girls that you don’t have to be thin to be beautiful, many a freshly body positive women’s mag editor has started off an interview with me, causing my pelvic floor to seize up in a fit of fury. No, I correct them, I’m showing young girls that you don’t have to be beautiful to matter.”

— Jessica Knoll

61. “He smelled like a date, all cologne and nerves.”

— Jessica Knoll

62. “They wouldn’t have wanted people to pity them or think they were complaining. Nobody liked a complainer, and we wanted so much for people to think well of us.”

— Jessica Knoll

63. “This is Luke’s favorite thing to say about me, to remind me. I’m a survivor. It’s the finality of the word that bothers me, its assuming implication. Survivors should move on. Should wear white wedding dresses and carry peonies down the aisle and overcome, rather than dwell in a past that can’t be altered. The word dismisses something I cannot, will not, dismiss.”

— Jessica Knoll

64. “I want to make it clear that as I move up in the world, my triumph comes not from being able to afford rent on an apartment with a dishwasher, but in being able to give back to the women who need it most.”

— Jessica Knoll

65. “Malnourish me, undervalue me, humiliate and harass me when I try to get my money anyway, but don’t you ever tell me to go about it nicely.”

— Jessica Knoll

66. “My heart seemed to drop down and back, the thing it always does right before I start to spin and spin. I refuse to call it a panic attack. Panic attacks are for nervous fliers, hipster neurotics. Their demons, whatever they are, can’t even compare to the terror of knowing it’s about to happen, the something bad I’ve been waiting for ever.”

— Jessica Knoll

67. “There is something about seeing someone from behind, something about the way people walk away, that I’ve always found unnervingly intimate. Maybe it’s because the back of the body isn’t on guard the way the front is – the slouch of the shoulders and the flex in the back muscles, that’s the most honest you’ll ever see a person.”

— Jessica Knoll

68. “Moving on doesn’t mean you don’t talk about it. Or hurt about it. Its always going to hurt, I imagine.”

— Jessica Knoll

69. “Still, there was something about telling people where you worked, their eyes lighting up in recognition, that I needed right now.”

— Jessica Knoll

70. “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

71. “Friday was the day we filmed in the studio, a cavernous room above a Starbucks in Media, PA. The whole place smelled like the burnt, overpriced fuel of diabetic Americans.”

— Jessica Knoll

72. “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

73. “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

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

— Jessica Knoll

75. “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

76. “Then I was lying on the tiles of his old kitchen, tiles.”

— Jessica Knoll

77. “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

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

— Jessica Knoll

79. “Sometimes, a momentary truce in girlhood is much more precious than a guy you really like asking you out, sticking around even after getting the milk for free.”

— Jessica Knoll

80. “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

81. “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

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

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. “I told Luke about that night at a time when he was enamored with me, which is the only time you should ever tell anyone something shameful about yourself – when a person is mad enough about you that disgrace is endearing.”

— Jessica Knoll

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

— Jessica Knoll

89. “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

90. “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

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

— Jessica Knoll

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

— Jessica Knoll

93. “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

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

— Jessica Knoll

95. “I learned that Jack Rogers sandals, so revered in college, screamed, “My small liberal arts school will always be the center of the universe!”

— Jessica Knoll