Lena Dunham 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.

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.

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

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

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

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 quit acting when I was 11 because I was cast as a bouncing ball in 'Alice in Wonderland,' and I felt slighted and wounded.

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.

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

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

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

At a brunch potluck, I realize that I do, in fact, hate everybody.

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.

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

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.

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.

Enjoy going through life as yourself.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Every time I start feeling sexy I trip.

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.

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.

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 can play very annoying girl, very lost girl and then all the things in the spectrum between.

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

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

Don't put yourself in situations you'd like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself.

There's a certain grace to having your heart broken.

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

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.

I've been a little haphazard about how nude I get, and the only thing that keeps me from getting anxious about it is that I've had complete control over it.

Escapism for me can come in the form of someone else's reality.

I have to take my shoes off, you guys.

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.

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.

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

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 get a lot of unasked for sexual confessions.

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 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.

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

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

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