Lena dunham quotes

The end never comes when you think it will. It's always ten steps past the worst moment, then a weird turn to the left.

I really loved ["The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P" by Adelle Waldman]. It's having a really hot moment. Unlike many hot books, it's actually really wonderful. I tend to have that reaction: I don't want to read it if everyone thinks it's cool. It was a really interesting insight into being young and male. Now that made me feel really thankful for my boyfriend and really thankful because he wasn't like that protagonist, but I know so many people who are like that protagonist.

Girls are trained to say, ‘I wrote this, but it’s probably really stupid.’ Well, no, you wouldn’t write a novel if you thought it was really stupid. Men are much more comfortable going, ‘I wrote this book because I have a unique perspective that the world needs to hear.’ Girls are taught from the age of seven that if you get a compliment, you don’t go, ‘Thank you’, you go, ‘No, you’re insane.

I have work, and then I have a dinner thing. And then I am busy, trying to become who I am.

I think we all feel that way when we're young we don't think teachers have lives. We don't think therapists have lives. We don't think doctors have lives.

My dad once told me that he would rather I had an old boyfriend than a tall boyfriend. I don't know why, I think he's just feels stressed by... He' not that short I just think the idea of a really tall guy is super anxiety producing to him. And now I'm with neither old guy nor a very tall guy. So everything has worked out perfectly.

One of the reasons I'm so proud of my mother is she took her skills of over a 40 years photographic career and translated that to a film.

Let's be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.

The male capacity for turning the negative into a compliment is really alarming.

It would probably be too easy a cop out to say that just Republican males hate me. Though there's a large swath of them, for sure.

Mine's [fans] a lot of like weird guys in prison. So I don't need to answer them.

My sister is bold, independent, and not afraid to wear overalls. Some of her first words as a child were "that's not fair," and she's been committed to social justice ever since. She's my hero.

Every time I start feeling sexy I trip.

I felt highly anxious in a way that I didn't think other children were.

I have sort of a Zen body philosophy, I'm sort of like: we're one weight one day, we're one weight another day, and some day our body just doesn't even exist at all! It's just a vessel I've been given to move through this life. I think about my body as a tool to do the stuff I need to do, but not the be all and end all of my existence. Which sounds like I spent a week at a meditation retreat, but it's genuinely how I feel.

My parents are artists; in their world, in the world of modern artists, you are supposed to just go into your studio and tune everything out, and your entire relationship with your work is supposed to be a super private one. That was the way to do it and you weren't deeply truly artistic if that wasn't the way you were engaging the press.

My thoughts on body image are simple: if you are being kind to yourself mentally and physically you never have anything to be ashamed for, ever.

Barbie’s disfigured. It’s fine to play with her just as long as you keep that in mind.

Here's who it's okay to share a bed with: . . . A heating pad. An empty bag of pita chips. The love of your life.

Positive, healthy, loving relationships in your twenties... I don't know if anyone would disagree with it: I think they're the exception, not the norm. People are either playing house really aggressively because they're scared of what an uncertain time it is, or they're avoiding commitment altogether.

My weight fluctuates depending on my mood and my current devotion to my fitness routine.

No one wants to see a tattoo on a stomach.

I think women are conditioned to stand by their man and watch them make it to the top, but most men never believe the person they get into a relationship with is going to rise any higher than she was when they met. It takes a very special, evolved person to be able to deal with change within a relationship.

I seriously consider television to be the people's medium. Like the idea of seeing your parents naked or having somebody go down on you and worrying about whether you smell, or worrying about whether your body is weird or what goes across the face of a person who's supposed to be experiencing pleasure but isn't - those are things I'd love to normalize on TV.

When I write I'm never really thinking about themes or the universal.

If someone doesn't answer your email within six hours, it means they hate you.

I consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can't articulate them. It's a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it.

I felt like I was a writer, and I just thought filmmaking was the best way for me to express that, because it allows me to embrace the visual world that I love. It's allows me to interact with people, to be more social than fiction or poetry, and it felt like the right way for me to tell the stories that felt pressing to me.

You know, when I first started making online videos, there were a lot of filmmakers I befriended who were doing it too.

There are so many reactions to art that make sense to me - but 'ick' means something.

Feminism and issues surrounding being female in the world, always, but particularly right now at this complicated cultural moment. It's a huge part of what's important to me.

I've always been someone in [childhood] period of my life sort of the pains and anxieties of being young are the things that have really stuck with me.

I sort of tend to equate tattoos with prisoners, punks or people with a high level of self-confidence. I don’t necessarily have a covered-in-tattoos personality.

My uncle's a lawyer and I remember going to see him in court and thinking, 'That's cool, too bad I could never be a lawyer.'

It is really funny how even cool chicks are sort of like, 'Our moms covered that feminism thing and now we're living in a post-that world,' when that just isn't true.

If a young woman is looking at the landscape of Hollywood, what she sees is almost only challenges.

The thing that's so hard about being a kid is you don't have enough knowledge to explain things yourself.

But ambition is a funny thing: it creeps in when you least expect it and keeps you moving, even when you think you want to stay put.

I think that it's very important to be with someone who makes you feel like the best version of yourself. In some sense, your partner is a mirror, and you have to like what they're reflecting back at you.

Of course you don't want anybody to feel shame for their sexuality. But you also want to make it clear that a loud, a loud and proud approach to your sexuality at a young age isn't necessary to be a fully integrated person.

On Girls I like being a mouthpiece for the issues I think young females face today. It’s always shocking when people question whether it’s a feminist show. How could a show about women exploring women not be? Feminism isn’t a dirty word. It’s not like we’re a deranged group who think women should take over the planet, raise our young on our own and eliminate men from the picture. Feminism is about women having all the rights that men have.

The people accusing me of being productive don't know how hard it is for me to just bend my elbow sometimes.

I think if you feel like you were born to write, then you probably were.

None of my actions have ever sort of been motored by the search for a husband or wondering if I was going to have a family someday or wanting to live in a really great house or thinking it would be really great to have a diamond.

From what I hear, [ "Fifty Shades of Grey" ] is not a way that I feel like I need to be turned on or like a hole that needs to be filled in me.

I always feel that there are two choices for women. Either be totally confident about your non-size-zero body and say, 'I love what I look like and this is who I am,' or be the person who is obsessed with diet and exercise and keeping toned. What feels more realistic to me is that some days I wake up and think I love how I look. On other days I say, 'If I had real self-control, I would be 10 pounds lighter.' That contradiction is, to me, what being a girl actually feels like.

You're a small business and you have to take care of yourself the way you would a small business and take care of yourself the way any small business owner would.

Women want to control other women because they've been controlled themselves. It's a cycle of control. I'm not blaming women for that, but I am saying we're part of a toxic culture that's feeding all of us the same messaging.

I think about my best friendship - which the Marnie-Hannah friendship in Girls is based on - as like a great romance of my young life.

Don't wait around for someone else to tell your story. Do it yourself by whatever means necessary.

I just hope that I continue to keep a line between my private life and who I play, even if they are closely intertwined, and so I'm careful. I don't even know where my line is, but I know I have a line.

For me, my life goal is to be in a position where I can wear pajamas 24 hours a day. That's what makes me happy.

I'm really lucky because I surround myself onset with people who I really trust to give me feedback, so I'm directing myself.

My parents were very supportive when I was growing up and have been all the way through.

But I also think when we embark on intimate relationships, we make a basic human promise to be decent, to hold a flattering mirror up to each other, to be respectful as we explore each other.

I don't want to get married until all gay people can get married.

There is something vulnerable about showing your tattoos to people, even while it gives you a feeling that you are wearing a sleeve when you are naked.

But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle.

The experience of directing yourself in a sex scene is, in a way, great. It's the fantasy we all have in our lives all the time.

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing.

Now if you went to someone's house to look for them, you would be a psychopath.

When we, as young women, are given the space to read, the act becomes a happy, private corner we can return to for the rest of our lives. We develop this love of reading by turning to stories that speak to the most special, secret parts of us.

It doesn't occur to so many people that if you don't have a clear heterosexual, gender confirming identity that there are parts of day-to-day life - like using a bathroom or getting your clothes - that just aren't going to be as easy.

It completely sickens me what our culture is doing to women. Last week I wore a big top and little shorts and a bunch of stuff came out saying I was without pants. 'The No-Pants Look,' it said. And I didn't go out without pants, I had shorts on... If Olivia Wilde had gone to a party with a big silky top and little shorts she might have been told her outfit was cute... What it was really: 'Why did you show us your thighs?'

Women saying "I'm not a feminist" is my greatest pet peeve. Do you believe that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you're a feminist.

I always thought the saddest feeling in life is when you're dancing in a really joyful way and then you hit your head on something.

I'm just waiting to be 85 and be in a pajama community. Everyone's welcome to join me.

I hate to be the person that's like, "We're doing something that's never been done before."

Confidence lets you pull anything off, even Tevas with socks.

It's okay to change your mind. About a feeling, a person, a promise of love.

I just don't want to be around people who don't hate everything in their life right now.

I never set out to make any statements about a specific character, I just set out to tell what feels like is a truthful story, a person that you and I might truly encounter.

I love what I do, I love every minute of it.

The idea of being a feminist-so many women have come to this idea of it being anti-male and not able to connect with the opposite sex-but what feminism is about is equality and human rights. For me that is just an essential part of my identity. I hope [Girls] contributes to a continuance of feminist dialogue

I think that people in the phase between being someone's kid and being someone's parent have always been uniquely narcissistic, but that social media and Twitter and LiveJournal make it really easy to navel-gaze in a way that you've never been able to before.

I didn't have to wait six years to get my show on the air, worry that someone else had a similar idea, or wait around for notes that took my voice out of the show.

This could very easily be taken out of context, and I think it's funny now, but I remember looking in the mirror as a kid and, it would be like for an hour at a time, and I'd be like, 'I'm just so beautiful. Everybody is so lucky that they get to look at me.' And of course that changes as you get older, but I may have held on to that little-kid feeling that was me alone in my bathroom.

It's funny, I never considered that people are going to see me on the show and maybe stop me on the subway.

You can't force other people to like you and you just kind of have to ride the wave. I think I could have saved myself a lot of sleepless nights with that advice.

I get a lot of unasked for sexual confessions.

I feel like a lot of the female relationships I see on TV or in movies are in some way free of the kind of jealousy and anxiety and posturing that has been such a huge part of my female friendships, which I hope lessens a little bit with age.

I do think girls in their twenties accept certain kinds of lesser treatment than they would at other times in their lives.

I'm always having to be told to brush my hair.

For anyone that has ever done a sex scene, it takes on the feeling of learning a ridiculous dance, like the electric slide. It's not a sexy experience.

Basically my new litmus test for people is, do they make me hear about a blow job they gave in the first ten minutes of us talking? And if they didn't then I can feel excited.

I used to think Twitter was a waste of time and sort of ran counter to my ability to be productive and to write and now Twitter feels like a really cool part of the creative experience.

I don't really have a place where people can reach me via email because it got a little overwhelming. People tweet things at me like, "oh DM me for a great story that you'll definitely need to use on the show," which I don't, you know, DM them.

I think that social networking makes people more connected, yet more distant, so there are people with less ties to real friend groups and less a sense of self.

Can we call a moratorium on the use of the term 'ladyparts'? Grazia!

We're the last f - ing people who have a f - ing opinion on what you should do with your body. Anything that makes your day easier, as long as you're not feeding your baby crack in milk, is really good by us.

I felt like my parents were always involved with abstraction, and I wanted to do something very specific.

There is no way that my mother hasn't influenced my career. She's my first critic. She's my best critic. She has the best instincts from writing to style to editing, to the visual elements of my career.

I am not a particularly political person, but, as a Tribeca resident, the commodification of September 11th is offensive to me.

I don’t really read reviews… That’s not where my attention goes.

We both followed our hearts and had no choice but to hurt each other deeply.

I thought about starting a novella club because it seemed less ambitious.

Survivors are so often re-victimized by a system that demands they prove their purity and innocence.

My mom said the term heavy petting existed a lot when she was in high school.

My parents were open about sex. And my dad makes paintings that have a sexual component and it still scares me.

It's not that I don't want to hear about that [blow job] stuff, I just want to hear about it immediately. And I want to hear about it on more comfortable terms.

I think some people are really connected to who they were as children. And some people aren't.

I remember it made me feel better because so many of my friends at school. Were doing that stuff and doing that stuff on sleep overs. But I just didn't feel ready. It wasn't like I had any judgment of it being two women. It would have scared me as much if not more. I was like a three month period in which all the words sleep over was code for was "let's get together and touch each other's vaginas." and I was. Haunted. And I remember going home and feeling like I couldn't tell my mother even though she would've understood and probably laughed.

Enjoy going through life as yourself.

You don't need to be flamboyant in your life to be flamboyant in your work.

It's very easy for me to say what success is. I think success is connecting with an audience who understands you and having a dialogue with them. I think success is continuing to push yourself forward creatively and not sort of becoming a caricature of yourself.

There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman. As hard as we have worked and as far as we have come, there are still so many forces conspiring to tell women that our concerns are petty, our opinions aren’t needed, that we lack the gravitas necessary for our stories to matter. That personal writing by women is no more than an exercise in vanity and that we should appreciate this new world for women, sit down, and shut up.

When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself.

Aren't most of us dealing with the fact that we have moms who either weren't ready to be moms or had some level of resentment about it? Everybody is dealing with the different iteration of pain their mom has handed them.

I’m not super thin, but I’m thin, for like, Detroit

I don't think anyone would want to come to my gallery show.

I'm not jealous in traditional ways - of boyfriends or babies or bank accounts - but I do covet other women's styles of being.

I should do the things that make me feel cool and smart. As I get older, I'm realizing more and more that it doesn't really matter if I'm good at it, it just matters that I try. My own effort, my own willingness, are becoming what's appealing to me.

Artists themselves are neurotic and fearful people, and you can look at their work and figure out what they're scared of.

When someone anonymous tells me I'm fat, that's not a person to me. If they're not going to acknowledge me as a person, I'm certainly not going to acknowledge them as a person.

Part of being a feminist is giving other women the freedom to make choices you might not necessarily make yourself.

Guys warning girls not to fall in love with them is so truly douchey that it should have a higher success rate.

Hell hath no fury like a woman who has accidentally napped.

I can never be who I was. I can simply watch her with sympathy, understanding, and some measure of awe. There she goes, backpack on, headed for the subway or the airport. She did her best with her eyeliner. She learned a new word she wants to try out on you. She is ambling along. She is looking for it.

What a snarky jerk. (Obviously, I later slept with him.)

There’s always an article coming out, saying, ‘The new thing is funny women!’

It's not brave to do something that doesn't scare you. Performing in sex scenes that I direct, exposing a flash of my weird puffy nipple, those things don't fall into my zone of terror.

I'm so in awe of what visual artists do and I do understand the differences of what visual artists do. I have a small art collection I hope to expand.

I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence.

At my age, no one is married, no one has kids, no one has a career.

I don't feel like my work is dependent on my size. I feel like my work is dependent on the fact that I'm an everywoman. I'd be an everywoman if I lost 20 pounds or if I gained 50 pounds, because of my attitude and it's my relationship to the world and the fact that like I have two front teeth that are bigger than the rest of my teeth.