Top 296 Quotes & Sayings by Lena Dunham - Page 5

I value my health and my happiness. And I've realized exercise can give me both of those things.

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.

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.

I have to remind myself that when you exercise, there is a natural calm that comes from knowing that you did something with your body that day. Actually going and working out makes everything else easier and better.

Luxury is nice, but creativity is nicer.

A huge part of the American trans population that's often overlooked are trans teenagers. Many of them are homeless, and those are not the people who are necessarily going in for a custom suit. But that's one of the reasons why we were excited that we got to do a contest with HBO to sponsor a young person getting a suit made who might not have the means to do it on their own.

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

I am comforted by the fact that I find a real range of female bodies beautiful, and I hope that other people do too. And even if they don't find it beautiful I hope they're just glad that something like it is happening on TV.

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.

I think Grace [Dunham] and I are always working from a personal place, and the fact that these were issues that we'd been talking about in our own families really clicked, but also Jason's [Benjamin] passion about it and his clear sense that this was going to be something emotional and remarkable to watch. It was very hard not get excited about it and want to help in any way we could.

In Hollywood, you've got a hundred people on set, and shooting the sex scene you're wearing nude-toned underwear and tape on your nipples. Nothing is going beyond where you want it to go.

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.

Here's what I have to say about being married: someday you will look at him, hating him with every fibre of your being, wishing that he would die the most violent death possible. It will pass.

On a personal level, I'm proud of Grace Dunham for being so staunchly in her identity. It's a very unusual thing for a young person. I think she's been very strong about it.

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.

Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve -- and makes you laugh along the way.

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

You have to move so you don't die. You have to move so your brain doesn't atrophy. You have to move so that you look a little bit like a person that you might want to be. There are a thousand reasons why exercise is important, and I've had to find ways to make it sexy for myself.

I'm really lucky because my sister is a real activist soul and also hyper-intellectualized in this way that's really allowed me to wrap my mind around some of the bigger intellectual concepts and really understand the language around identity in the gender nonconforming community.

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.

For straight, hetero people it's very easy to unintentionally say something that might not honor people's identities fully, and Grace Dunham is a really amazing educational resource.

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

I'd always loved movies, but it wasn't some sort of desperate love of celluloid. It was literally like, "I want to write things, and I want people to see them more."

I'm so proud of Jason's [Benjamin] work. I can say this and he can't, but there's no group of documentary subjects more devoted to their documentarian. The vibes are really positive, and I feel so lucky.

I feel prettier with a naked face and ChapStick. But a good haircut makes a huge difference.

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

As a woman who doesn't necessarily fit the beauty standard in Hollywood... I really related to the narrative of looking for something you felt comfortable in that would properly express your identity, especially when your identity didn't feel like it necessarily matched the one that was being imposed on you.

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.

I feel lucky in that the same way I've surrounded myself with people I'm creatively comfortable with, I've surrounded myself with people who are accepting of the way that I look.

I think that as our country becomes more tolerant as a whole of certain things, hopefully becomes more tolerant, there's a way that certain kinds of bullying will be passe and unacceptable.

I feel like so much more than my gender and so much more than my relationship to my body and my relationship to men. And, but suddenly you're sort of asked to be an expert.

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.

I'll start by saying that "Fifty Shades of Grey:" It's like I don't have. an elicit confused relationship to my sexuality. So I don't need a book like that.

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

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

I took "Forever" [by Judy Blume] to the bathroom to read [when I was eight] and then I heard my mom coming so I stuck it under the toilet and went running out. And I went back later to check for it. And it was gone.

This weird pressure that mothers are put under, like this idea that if you can't breastfeed, you're not doing something properly, or if you choose not to.

It'll be taught in homes that it's not okay to make fun of a kid because he's gay or it's not okay to make fun of a girl cause she's fat. But that we have been living for so long in a culture where so many people's parents supported those beliefs that there wasn't any infrastructure for children understanding right and wrong in those situations, if that makes sense.

I learned about sex pretty early when I was, I remember, my friend Amanda DeLauro explained it to me when I was six and then I went home and I told my parents, "Oh my God, Amanda said this ridiculous thing, can you believe how stupid this is? She's insane.

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

I have an authority problem.

My parents are pretty liberal. But they were just you know trying to look out for my innocence or whatever. But my babysitter had "Forever" [by Judy Blume]. And I said "Well I've read Judy Blume books, can I borrow that?" And she said no, this one's not appropriate for you. Which obviously, got me really worked up. So I took it.

I probably I went into my room alone [when I was six] and I was just like, how have I even, how can I even continue on this earth with this terrible, terrible knowledge [about sex].

The current economic climate means getting out of college is no guarantee of getting a job, and no guarantee of a satisfying work life. My Dad feels that this is the first generation of Americans that expects that there children will have a harder time then they did. That's a fascinating concept.

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

You get reactions and you connect to people and I love Twitter.

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.

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.

I write at all different times. I write in my bed, I write at the table. I need to get it together. I'm working on a book and working, and just jam it in whenever it makes sense.

The only time I felt like a weird exploiter - even though I knew I wasn't one - was when I was writing a sex scene between me and my adorable co-star [Adam Driver] in which he had to tell me how much he loved my potbelly. It seemed like a weird wish-fulfillment thing, where I'm directing my own fantasy.

That's the feeling [of relativity] I always had about [Judy Blume] books which I re-read and re-read and re-read.

There is a sort of backlash of people who feel like you're not representing them accurately, and you want to say as elegantly as you can, "I wasn't trying to represent you I, was just doing what I could do to make being alive easier for me." And if it helped anyone or made them feel comforted in the process then it's the greatest thing you can ask for.

We're living in a world where [Judy Blume] books were ever banned, and now like "Fifty Shades of Grey" is being read in high schools. Like it's just a wild.

I also really like to read good books and I don't have enough time to do it. So it's really hard for me to imagine willingly submitting myself to a trilogy of books that I've been told are at the fourth grade reading level which isn't a very nice thing to say but.

I had no clue what anyone was talking about like, you know I don't think I, I don't think any of the depictions of sex were more to me than just like an image of two people's arms rubbing together [when I was eight], I just had no clue.

My boyfriend's a musician, and I think when he's on stage is the only time he's not worrying. And so that's the reason he keeps doing it is because it gives him that sort of experience of weightlessness that I only get out of being sort of, deep into writing something or really lost in a moment on set, like it's available to me in these select moments through my work.