Lena Dunham Quotes & Sayings

I love flawed female characters, duking it out. — Lena Dunham

You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them. — Lena Dunham

A night of carousing never passed without me stepping outside the experience to think, Yes, this must be what it is to be young. — Lena Dunham

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

One of my favorite facts about Jason [Benjamin] is that he collects shirts from tattoo parlors. He has a bunch of tattoo parlor T-shirts, but no tattoos. And then he wears, like, vans and jeans. My boyfriend said he looks like a modern Bruce Springsteen, which is a pretty high compliment. — Lena Dunham

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

I did love Ben, in a sense. Because he cooked for me. Because he told me that my body was beautiful, like a Renaissance painting, something I badly needed to hear. Because his stepmother was the same age as him, and that is really sad. But I also didn't: Because his vanity drove him to wear vintage shoes that gave him blisters. Because he gave me HPV. He called me terrible names when I broke up with him for a Puerto Rican named Joe with a tattoo that said mom in Comic Sans. Admittedly, I didn't handle it too well either when, several months later, he moved in with a girl who taught special-needs preschool. I didn't utter the words "I love you" again in a romantic context for more than two years. Joe turned out to consider blow jobs misogynistic and pretended his house had caught fire just to get out of plans. — Lena Dunham

In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge has kept me from sinking. — Lena Dunham

And I decided then that I will never be jealous. I will never be vengeful. I won't be threatened by the old, or by the new. I'll open wide like a daisy every morning. I will make my work. — Lena Dunham

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

Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It's something you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. — Lena Dunham

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

If you have a bad feeling about someone, don't worry about offending them. Just run. Being polite is how you get your purse stolen or your purse stolen. — Lena Dunham

I am sorry (not to you but in a deeper way, sorry for my brain chemistry and who I am. — Lena Dunham

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

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

Her Brooklyn accent only comes out when she's angry. This is the best part ... I pick at my pancakes while she tells me, simply, "It's ok to change your mind." About a feeling, a person, a promise of love. I can't stay just to avoid contradicting myself. I don't have to watch him cry. — Lena Dunham

After several interactions in which he questioned my authority and pretended not to hear me speaking, it was clear he was my type — Lena Dunham

My mother understood, implicitly, the power of it. See these hips, these teeth, these eyebrows, these stockings that bunch and sag at the ankles? They're worth capturing, holding on to forever. I'll never be this young again. Or this lonely. Or this hairy. Come one, come all, to my private show. — Lena Dunham

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

I don't blame anyone and I wouldn't change anything, but if you had told me - if you had warned me there would be so many periods of pain and isolation - I'm not sure what I would have done differently. Shut up? Yelled louder? Worried less or, alternately, more, like a person with an illness that may kill her but it's unclear when? — Lena Dunham

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

The British lady, trying to make conversation, asked Zoe and me what our parents did if we were "bad girls." "When I'm bad, I get a time-out," Zoe said. "When I'm bad," I announced, "my father sticks a fork in my vagina." This is hard to share without alarm bells sounding. We're taught to listen to little girls, particularly when they say things about being sodomized with cutlery. Also my father makes sexually explicit artwork so he's probably already on the FBI's fork-in-vagina radar. — Lena Dunham

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

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

I know he loves talking about death. It just takes him a second to get warmed up. "You know," he says. "It just can't be a bad thing. Because it's everything. — Lena Dunham

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

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'? — Lena Dunham

Once, my little sister was walking down the street in her thick black glasses, and a homeless man muttered, Talk nerdy to me. — Lena Dunham

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

I've always been attracted to jerks. They range from sassy weirdos who are ultimately pretty good guys to sociopathic sex addicts, but the common denominator is a bad attitude upon first meeting and a desire to teach me a lesson. — Lena Dunham

Each corner is a memory. In that way, it's just like every town. — Lena Dunham

The way I saw it, I was fully capable of being treated with indifference that bordered on disdain while maintaining a strong sense of self-respect. I obeyed his commands, sure that I could fulfill this role while still protecting the sacred place inside of me that I knew deserved more. Different. Better.
But that isn't how it works. — Lena Dunham

After all, if a girl whines in her walk-in closet and no one's there to hear her, did she really whine at all? Something — Lena Dunham

I was reminded again that there are so many things we need that can also hurt us: cars, knives, grown-ups. — Lena Dunham

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

I have never been a physically engaged person. Like, I was not an athletic kid. I was the kid who came up with a thousand excuses not to take a gym class. Even now, if I could, I would do all my work from bed. — Lena Dunham

She asks me my worst quality, and I say I can be very self-involved. She says hers is that she gets lost in the world of her work and can't find her way back out again. — Lena Dunham

Enjoy going through life as yourself. — Lena Dunham

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

Even when presented with evidence of my own productivity I think that the people accusing me of being productive don't know how hard it is for me to just bend my elbow sometimes. — Lena Dunham

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

I've never seen Star Wars or The Godfather, so that would be a good excuse for us to spend a bunch of time together. — Lena Dunham

I've only recently realized that I have a radically different relationship with my parents than a lot of people. — Lena Dunham

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

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

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

I was sure that, once I let someone penetrate me, my world would change in some indescribable yet fundamental way. I would never be able to hug my parents with the same innocence, and being alone with myself would have a different tenor. How could I ever experience true solitude again when I'd had someone poking around my insides? How permanent virginity feels, and then how inconsequential. — Lena Dunham

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

And underscoring it all was my father's insistence that my sister and I were the prettiest, smartest, and baddest bitches in Gotham town, no matter how many times we pissed ourselves or cut our own bangs with blunt kitchen scissors. — Lena Dunham

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

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later. — Lena Dunham

You can't give any exciting speech without misremembering things. — Lena Dunham

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

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

There's always an article coming out, saying, 'The new thing is funny women!' — Lena Dunham

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

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

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

I can't find a goddamn fucking job and I'm too fat to be a stripper, I said as I polished off a stale croissant. — Lena Dunham

Getting naked feels better some days than others. (Good: when you are vaguely tan. Bad: when you have diarrhea.) — Lena Dunham

Our minifridge had nothing but tres leches cake in it. — Lena Dunham

AMFYOYO - an acronym for "adios motherfucker, you're on your own — Lena Dunham

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. — Lena Dunham

She has never listened to Deepak Chopra, switched to almond milk, or meditated. Yet she is here, in the chair by the window in the house she was born in, outliving her husband and siblings and nephews and friends. — Lena Dunham

It made me feel silenced, lonely, and far away from myself, a feeling that I believe, next to extreme nausea sans vomiting, is the depth of human misery. — Lena Dunham

The next day we ate too much In-N-Out Burger and lay in bed beside each other and I cried ostensibly because I'd miss him when I left, but truly I felt dead inside — Lena Dunham

college was a wonderful gig, thousands of hours to tend to yourself like a garden. — Lena Dunham

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

I don't love any of my old boyfriends anymore. I'm not sure I ever did, and I'm not sure if at the time I thought I was sure. My mother says that's normal, that men are proud of every one of their conquests, and women wish they could forget it all. She says that's an essential gender difference, and I can't say I disprove her theory. What keeps me from full revulsion, from wanting the sexual equivalent of an annulment, is thinking about what I got from each one that I still hold on to now. — Lena Dunham

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. — Lena Dunham

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

Later in the summer your grandfather dies, and you're secretly glad. You have a place to put all your sorrow now, one that people will understand. — Lena Dunham

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

My relationship to eating, my relationship to critiquing my own shape, all of that has changed since I've started viewing my body much more as a tool to do my work. — Lena Dunham

I started writing plays, but the fact that plays don't last forever was too much for me to bear. — Lena Dunham

The way in which you share your body must be a CHOICE. Support these women and do not look at these pictures. — Lena Dunham

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

Let this book take you to the stars and beyond. — Lena Dunham

When I'm playing a character, I am never allowed to explicitly state the the takeaway message of the scenes I'm performing - after all, part of the dramatic conflict is that the person I'm portraying doesn't really know it yet. — Lena Dunham

It's a very specific body. Even great reviews will be like: chubby, portly, overweight ... Sometimes I'm like, 'Ugh, how did I make myself the guinea pig for this?' But on the other hand, hating my body has not been my cross to bear in this life. Which I feel very lucky about. — Lena Dunham

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. — Lena Dunham

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

I have an agent now. — Lena Dunham

Not to speak for Jason [Benjamin], but he's a straight married dude with two kids. — Lena Dunham

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

I think of my body as a tool to do the stuff I need to do, but not the be all end all of my existence. — Lena Dunham

I'm half Jewish half WASP. — Lena Dunham

I nodded. "I'd like that." Or I'd like to like that. But — Lena Dunham

I look all right. I look like myself. — Lena Dunham

Well, friends, learning about the "world" is not pretending you're a hooker while a guy from the part of New Jersey that's near Pennsylvania decides which Steely Dan record to put on at 4:00 A.M. The secrets of life aren't being revealed when someone laughs at you for having studied creative writing. There is no enlightenment to be gained from letting your semiboyfriend's bald friend touch your thigh too close to the place where it meets your crotch, but you let it happen because you think you might be in love. — Lena Dunham

Running had always been off the table for me. It just looks embarrassing when I do it. I viewed it like learning a new language - best to learn it as a child. — Lena Dunham

Hugs feel good even when they come from strangers. Ergo, we should all be hugging more. — Lena Dunham

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

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

And my mother always knew that, hence her Nikon raised high and pointed right into the mirror. She sensed that by documenting her own body, she was preserving her history. Beautifully. Nakedly. Imperfectly. Her private experiment made way for my public one. — Lena Dunham

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

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

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. — Lena Dunham

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