The Favorite Sister Quotes

“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, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“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. 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.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“It wasn't until I admitted to my own place in the (abuse and trauma ) cycle that people gave me the respect I always knew I deserved. And now that I have it, I can't stop wondering why it is that for a woman's work to be taken seriously, she has to bleed first? and why I was so quick to open a vein?”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“Sisters are reliably good for two things: hating and loving.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“A women living alone in a big ole house almost always invites the question of how she's going to fill it. Partner, kids, multiple rescue dogs, each with its own Instagram account. But a five-million-dollar shack in the most expensive beach destination in the country answers that question with gorgeous restraint. A woman in a home only big enough for herself is the ultimate fuck you to patriarchal society. It says, 'I am enough for me'.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“Men who call women crazy are always the men who have first pushed them to the brink.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“It’s human nature to want your decisions validated. You feel better about yourself and your life when others make the same choices as you do.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“Go on, right now, and look up the Instagram and Twitter profiles of all the men you know. How many of them list father or husband to @theirwife’sname in their bios? Not many, I’d guess, because men are raised to view themselves as multifaceted beings, with complexities and contradictions and prismatic identities. And when they only have a certain number of characters in which to describe themselves, when they reduce themselves to just one or two things, it is more likely their profession”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“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,”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“Isn't that the secret sauce of seduction? First the snare of mystery, then the distinctly female instinct to rehabilitate.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“Only now, it feels like instead of pretending to be in a fight, we're pretending to be friends .In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined that the fight would become real and the friendship the charade.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“Reality TV is like driving drunk. You know it might kill you, but there is something rakishly sexy about tempting the fates.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“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, The Favorite Sister

“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. 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, The Favorite Sister

“A woman in a home only big enough for herself is the ultimate fuck you to patriarchal society. It says I am enough for me.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“And guess what? It’s okay that we do not get along. 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, The Favorite Sister

“This fear that we might regress to our childhood roles- me the golden child, Brett the repobate- was a fire that nothing could put out entirely. At least you didn't have a shitty childhood, she would say whenever something bad happens to me in adulthood, as though I had no right to complained if I had to get a root canal done not because I was mom's favorite growing up. What Brett never understood was that mom preferred me because she could control me, and that made for a shitty childhood in its own right. I was the yes daughter, and for the record what that got me wasn't love. What that got me was a lowering limbo bar, until I couldn't bend any beeper. So I Snapped.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“...but already I know, this is not a feeling. This is a growth. Inoperable, benign but painfully pressing on a vital organ. It will be with me, hurting me and not killing me, all my life.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said. This is what the editors chose to lead with, about a woman whose inventions made satellites possible.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“Hi girls,' Hank says. I let that slide because Hank is in his seventies. But Diggers have rules. The establishing tenet: 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? Try saying it out loud. It sounds non-native.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“a dab of Vaseline in the bow of my lips, a spritz”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“...but when I lie in bed at night I can’t help but wish that this human suit of mine came with a zipper, that I could hang it in my custom white oak closet with the Chanel spotlights and take a break from myself, even for an hour.”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister