Lena Dunham famous quotes

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Girl #Stupid #Book

People are ultimately threatened by young people taking positions of power.
-- Lena Dunham

#People

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

#Survivor #Demand #Innocence

I remember asking my mom, "Do you think that I will ever have enough money to live outside of your house?" And she would be like, "You just never know."
-- Lena Dunham

#Mom #Thinking #House

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

#Mean #Waiting #Stories

When you're writing a script you have the option to embellish on life or switch the order of events or make it generally more cinematic. I would stick too closely to my own experience and not necessarily think about the fact that it needs to have an event happen. Realising that I could channel my own experience into a story that was slightly more cinematic was a very important moment for me - allowing myself to accept that the kind of screenwriting I'm doing is a work of fiction.
-- Lena Dunham

#Writing #Thinking #Order

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Philosophy #Moving #Thinking

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

#Baby #Jealous #Style

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

#Reading #Add #Week

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Tattoo #People #Giving

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Reading #Space #Secret

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

#Funny Inspirational #Use #Term

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Women #Dancing #Feelings

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Mom #Feminist #Feminism

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Friendship #Girl #Thinking

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Writing #Exercise #Vanity

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Hate #Males #Republican

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

#Writing #Thinking #Like You

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Husband #Thinking #House

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Thinking #Becoming #Easy

Every time I start feeling sexy I trip.
-- Lena Dunham

#Sexy #Feelings

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Tattoo #Self Confidence #People

When I graduated college I had a series of just humiliating jobs that I couldn't believe I was at.
-- Lena Dunham

#Jobs #Believe #College

All my freakouts have been pretty private and directed at family pets and/or people I have been dating for too short a time to freak out at in that way.
-- Lena Dunham

#People #Dating #Pet

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

#Routine #Weight #Devotion

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

#Hair #Brushes

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Commitment #Thinking #People

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Jobs #Believe #Men

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Love #Pads #Bed

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

#Sock

Enjoy going through life as yourself.
-- Lena Dunham

#Enjoy

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Beautiful #Powerful #Taken

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

#Hell #Fury

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Simple #Body #Be Kind

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

#Hate #Mean #Email

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

#Giving #Choices #Feminist

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Ideas #Smell #People

I can’t imagine a passionate affair with a native man
-- Lena Dunham

#Men #Passionate #Affair

I’m not super thin, but I’m thin, for like, Detroit
-- Lena Dunham

#Detroit

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Sex #Fall #Brave

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

#Play #Long #Mind

I deserved kisses. I deserved to be treated like a piece of meat but also respected for my intellect.
-- Lena Dunham

#Kissing #Meat #Pieces

I know that when I am dying, looking back, it will be women that I regret having argued with, women I sought to impress, to understand, was tortured by. Women I wish to see again, to see them smile and laugh and say, It was all as it should have been.
-- Lena Dunham

#Regret #Laughing #Wish

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Girl #Zero #Real

I still go to a party and say something embarrassing to someone, and then write them a weird e-mail about it the next day, and then write them a text because I think they didn't get the e-mail. No matter what happens with your level of success, you still have to deal with all the baggage that is yourself.
-- Lena Dunham

#Party #Writing #Thinking

I'm always afraid that I'm being unprofessional, yet I continue to sign all my e-mails 'xoxo.'
-- Lena Dunham

#Mail

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Believe #Men #Thinking

Things that feel super personal actually feel really universal. It's sort of the more you really identify something specific within yourself, the more people connect to it because ultimately we are all connected in some way.
-- Lena Dunham

#People #Way #Feels

I've always been someone who feels better, if I see what I'm going through in a movie.
-- Lena Dunham

#Feel Better #Feels

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

#Funny Women #Coming Out #Articles

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Mean #Littles #Coming Back

Feminists believe that men and women should have the same opportunities. If you are a feminist you believe in equal rights as a whole. That’s not a concept you can really shoot down.
-- Lena Dunham

#Believe #Opportunity #Men

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

#Who I Am #Trying #Dinner

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Past #Thinking #Steps

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Thinking #Mirrors #Promise

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

#Needs

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Girl #Dirty #Men

There's people who don't want to see bodies like mine or bodies like their own bodies.
-- Lena Dunham

#People #Body #Want

I had no friends. I worried a lot.
-- Lena Dunham

#No Friends #Worried

The work that's interesting to me in other people is really confessional.
-- Lena Dunham

#People #Interesting

The parts I enjoy playing aren't really available to me. So I have to write them.
-- Lena Dunham

#Writing #Enjoy

I thought I was really a radical, political person, which of course I am not.
-- Lena Dunham

#Political #Radical #Persons

I feel like I don't watch that many shows with death.
-- Lena Dunham

#Watches #Shows #Feels

When it's low-budget, and you have one other person on the set, you have to make rules.
-- Lena Dunham

#Lows #Persons

My mom knows pretty well how I see her.
-- Lena Dunham

#Mom #My Mom #Wells

I seriously consider television to be the people's medium.
-- Lena Dunham

#People #Television #Mediums

I'm glad if my work can make a difference.
-- Lena Dunham

#Differences #Making A Difference #Glad

I love what I do, I love every minute of it.
-- Lena Dunham

#Minutes

My fears came true: People called me fat and hideous, and I lived. And now I keep living.
-- Lena Dunham

#People #Fats #True People

sometimes I was so bored that I started arguments just to experience the rush of almost losing him.
-- Lena Dunham

#Dating #Bored #Losing

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Running #Unique #Essence

But I want to tell my stories, more than that, I have to in order to stay sane.
-- Lena Dunham

#Order #Stories #Want

It's really hard to grow with another person.
-- Lena Dunham

#Grows #Persons

I refresh Twitter as thoughtlessly as some twirl their hair.
-- Lena Dunham

#Hair

I learned that people are much more game to mock their own personas than you would think.
-- Lena Dunham

#Thinking #Games #People

You should always go where there is a 'you-shaped' hole in the world.
-- Lena Dunham

#World #Holes #Should

I didn't tell him I was a virgin, just that I hadn't done it 'that much.' It hurt a little more than I'd expected but in a different way, and he was nervous too and he never came. Afterwards we lay there and talked, and I could tell he was a really nice person. I commended myself for making a healthy, albeit hasty, partner choice. I really couldn't wait to tell my mom.
-- Lena Dunham

#Mom #Hurt #Nice

I mean, I - it's so funny, I am, you know, I am, you know, a working woman out in the world, but I still live with my parents half the time. I've been sort of taking this very long, stuttering period of moving out.
-- Lena Dunham

#Moving #Mean #Long

I would go to work from 9 to 6, go home, nap for two hours, then write from 8 to 2 a.m.
-- Lena Dunham

#Home #Writing #Naps

I was raised on the internet.
-- Lena Dunham

#Internet #Raised

I never thought of myself as like, a funny person.
-- Lena Dunham

#Funny #Persons

I have to take my shoes off, you guys.
-- Lena Dunham

#High Heels #Shoes #Guy

I didn't drink in the essence of the classroom. I didn't take legible notes or dance all night. I thought I would marry my boyfriend and grow old and sick of him. I thought I would keep my friends, and we'd make different, new memories. None of that happened. Better things happened.
-- Lena Dunham

#Memories #Night #Essence

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

#Males #Negative #Compliment

Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying,
-- Lena Dunham

#Girl #Trying #Predator

I shared a bed with my sister, Grace, until I was seventeen years old. She was afraid to sleep alone and would begin asking me around 5:00 P.M. every day whether she could sleep with me. I put on a big show of saying no, taking pleasure in watching her beg and sulk, but eventually I always relented. Her sticky, muscly little body thrashed beside me every night as I read Anne Sexton, watched reruns of SNL, sometimes even as I slipped my hand into my underwear to figure some stuff out.
-- Lena Dunham

#Sleep #Night #Hands

You’ve learned a new rule and it’s simple: don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself, like that bunny in Runaway Bunny runs to its mother, but you are the mother and you’ll see that later and be very, very proud.
-- Lena Dunham

#Mother #Running #Simple

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Girl #Struggle #Hopeful

Everyone needs something from me.
-- Lena Dunham

#Needs

Scandal has made wine and popcorn seem like a viable, even healthful, meal.
-- Lena Dunham

#Wine #Meals #Popcorn

Calling someone a drama queen is so negative. Why not 'content creator'?
-- Lena Dunham

#Drama #Individuality #Negative

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.
-- Lena Dunham

#Jealous #Men #People