Lena Dunham Quotes

“That is because no one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself, okay? So any mean thing someone's gonna think of to say about me, I've already said to me, about me, probably within the last half hour.”
― 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 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 watched men order at dinner, ask for shitty wine and extra bread with confidence I could never muster, and thought, what a treat that must be. But I also considered 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, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“...sure that my people were from elsewhere and going elsewhere and that they would recognize me when they saw me. They would like me enough that it wouldn't matter if I liked myself. They would see the good in me so that I could, too.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“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 women. 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, and 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, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“How are we supposed to live every day if we know we're going to die?' He looked at me, clearly pained by the dawning of my genetically predestined morbidity. He had been the same way as a kid. A day never went by where he didn't think about this eventual demise. He sighed, leaned back in his chair, unable to conjure a comforting answer. 'You just do'.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“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, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“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. You are made up of compartments! You are one whole person! What gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto, what gets done. 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. This is so simple. But I tried so hard to make it complicated.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“it's really hitting me where I live. Prose poetry about what it feels like to be young and have the whole world caught inside your throat.”
― Lena Dunham