“It’s the Wild West”: Amanda Knox on True Crime, Prison Food, and Summer Flings

In her second memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning, Amanda Knox situates herself in a long lineage of women that have been maligned and extorted over the years for public entertainment: “You know who I’m talking about,” she writes. “The women who’ve been the subject of TMZ headlines, SNL skits, and David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists,” referencing Monica Lewinsky and Lorena Bobbitt, among others. Perhaps no one better understands how one unfortunate incident can propel your name into infamy than the one-time study abroad student who served four years in an Italian prison for a homicide she didn’t commit. Knox, now 37, spent years getting her conviction overturned while rehabilitating her tabloid-induced reputation as a calculating, sex-raged, drug-abusing murder. It’s this aching self-awareness of what the media made of her—and a strong desire to reclaim her identity as a mother and an activist through philosophical inquiry—that animates her autobiography, which is out today. Shortly before the book’s release, Knox kindly called in from Budapest to take part in our Rorschach test, where she sounded off on Nancy Grace, prison food, and the court of public opinion. 

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PAPARAZZI

“I don’t understand why anyone feels good about that job. You’re just a person who’s paid to stalk people.”

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TABLOIDS

“The people who pay the people who are paid to stalk you. Waste of everyone’s time. And unfortunately, selling the product of everyone’s worst impulses.”

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SUMMER FLINGS

“I am 100% pro a summer fling, especially when you’re young and discovering yourself. And you know what? Raffaele [Sollecito] was an incredible fling. I think one of the many, many tragic things about the story is that Raffaele’s and my romance was very much cut short.”

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STOICISM

“Unfortunately, it gets a sort of bro reputation, but it’s actually incredibly valuable. And it’s not about being miserable. It’s absolutely about training yourself to encounter life’s obstacles with an open mind. So I’m trying to bring it back to the ladies.”

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TRUE CRIME 

“So complicated. At its best, it brings to light things that have been either forgotten or overlooked, things that are absolutely in the public interest, and helps instigate change to help victims of crime and the victims of the criminal justice system alike. At its worst, it is an utter exploitation of people’s worst nightmares and is done without the consent of those who are directly impacted.”

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ITALIAN FOOD

“Still some of the best food in the whole frickin’ world, man. I didn’t get to eat much of it while I was there.”

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PRISON FOOD

“I am glad mine didn’t have maggots in it.”

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THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

“The best-smelling place in the world. I was shocked by how good it smells to be home.”

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RUMORS

“Be careful: you don’t know what is happening through the grapevine, and everyone is usually projecting their own shit.”

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STUDY ABROAD

“Still very pro. A lot of people think I’m not, but expanding your horizons and immersing yourself in another culture is a beautiful thing to do in this very, very divided world. That said, you are more vulnerable in places when you are far away from your network, so just keep that in mind, and let your threshold of what counts as a red flag be lowered.”

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LUIGI MANGIONE

“I haven’t been following this case. I know people have been buying Luigi paraphernalia on Amazon, so I guess Nintendo is really happy about it.”

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NANCY GRACE

“I’ve never been in the room with her, but I get the feeling that we would not get along.”

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ZEN BUDDHISM

“That is my jam. What I love about it is that it’s not dogmatic. It’s really about fundamentally sitting down with yourself and realizing when you really are deep down with it, just sitting there with yourself, that you are okay.”

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DOGE

“All I know is that people who I work with in criminal justice reform are afraid that they’re going to lose funding in order to help people who are in need.”

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LIARS

“When you cherry-pick facts and obscure others, or when you say the opposite of what actually happened, it’s not just problematic, it’s deeply hurtful. I’ve had a lot of people lie to me in my life in really scary ways that weren’t just harmful, but they’re actually reshaping reality around me and making it harder for me to interact with the world.”

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KAFKAESQUE

“I thought for a long time that my experience was particularly Kafkaesque, but I’ve come to realize that we all experience moments of our life when things just come out of nowhere and we feel trapped in our own lives. So my hope is that by sharing my own experience, especially in my new book, people will not only get to see me better, but will also feel seen themselves and process their own Kafkaesque experiences.”

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MOTHERHOOD

“So grateful to have the opportunity. I’m one of the very few wrongly convicted women that I know who didn’t have that stolen from them.”

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THE 2000s

“I kind of blame the 2000s a little bit for what happened to me. I think we forget that back in 2007, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was a thing, and I feel like what happened to me is what happens when Garden State collides with law and order.”

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THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

“What is that term that we have in court where there are regulations around what is allowed as evidence, what is allowed as expert testimony, what is allowed as relevant information, what is an appropriate punishment? No rules exist in the court of public opinion and therefore it is the wild west and very, very brutal and capricious.”

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ELON MUSK

“Didn’t he want to go to Mars? What happened to that?”

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CULTS

“Cults are everywhere. They’re not just religious. People don’t like to think that they’re not a part of a cult, but I think we all inadvertently find ourselves thrusting ourselves behind a movement or an ideology without actually really interrogating it, myself included. Be careful if everything that you’re getting from a ideological movement seems to be so right. If you’re not questioning it, you’re in a cult.”