Quotes by Lena Dunham

How are we supposed to live every day if we know were 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 didnt think about this eventual demise. He sighed, leaned back in his chair, unable to conjure a comforting answer. You just do.

I always reminded myself that this wasnt exactly where I was meant to be, but pit stops are okay on the road of life, arent they?

Heres what I have to say about being married: someday you will look at him, hating him with every fiber of your being, wishing that he would die the most violent death possible. It will pass.--Hannah Horvaths dying grandmother

I just dont want to be around people who dont hate everything in their life right now.

Enjoy going through life as yourself.

I am grown up. Thats why I cooked all this food!

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.

The most terrifying aspect of human health is our refusal to take steps to help ourselves and the fact that we are so often responsible for our own demise through lack of positive action.

I go back to Oberlin in the dead of winter to give a convocation speech in Finney Chapel, the largest and most historic of campus structures. In a subconscious nod to my college experience I forget to pack both tights and underwear and have to spend the weekend going commando in a wool skirt and knee socks. I am toured around the school like a stranger by a girl who didnt even go here. We stop at a glossy new cafe for tea and scones. She asks if I want a tour of the dormitories- no, I just want to wander around alone and maybe cry.

Ive always had a talent for recognizing when I am in a moment worth being nostalgic for. When I was little, my mother would come home from a party, her hair cool from the wind, her perfume almost gone, and her lips a faded red, and she would coo at me Youre still awake! Hiiii. And Id think how beautiful she was and how I always wanted to remember her stepping out of the elevator in her pea-green wool coat, thirty-nine years old, just like that.

If I had known how much I would miss these sensations I might have experienced them differently, recognized their shabby glamour, respected the ticking clock that defined this entire experience. I would have put aside my resentment, dropped my defenses. I might have a basic understanding of European history or economics. More abstractly, I might feel I had truly been somewhere, open and porous and hungry to learn. Because being a student was an enviable identity and one I can only reclaim by attending community college late in life for a bookmaking class or something.

A month into the semester, I would start showing up twenty minutes late to class again. The rewards werent enough to keep me on task, and life got in the way. My mind wandered to the future, postcollege, when Id create my own schedule that served my need to eat a rich snack every five to fifteen minutes. As for the disappointment written across the teachers face? I couldnt, and wouldnt, care.

Remember when you discovered your father owned a book called How To Disappear and Never Be Found? Youre sure it was just research for new and creative ways of thinking, for concepts that might apply to his work, but it raised the distinct possibility that there is something very upsetting that people you love could do instead of dying.

Ive never seen Star Wars or The Godfather, so that would be a good excuse for us to spend a bunch of time together.

The most terrifying aspect of human health is our refusal to take steps to help ourselves and the fact that we are so often responsible for our own demise through lack of positive action,

And then, on the final day, it was time for the faux Underground Railroad. This is the part that no one believes. No adult would ever do that, they say. You cant be remembering that right. I am, in fact, remembering it perfectly. The counselors shackled us together with jump ropes so we were like slave families and then released us into the woods. We were given a map with a route to freedom in the North, which must have been only three or four hundred feet but felt like much more. Then a counselor on horseback followed ten minutes later, acting as a bounty hunter. Hearing hooves, I crouched being a rock with Jason Baujelais and Sari Brooker, begging them to be quiet so we werent caught and whipped. I was too young, self-involved, and dissociated to wonder what kind of impact this had on my black classmates. All I knew was that I was miserable. We heard the sound of hooves growing closer and Max Kitnicks light asthma wheezes from beind an oak tree. Shut up, Jason hissed, and I knew we were cooked. When the counselor appeared, Sari started to cry.

When I graduated college I had a series of just humiliating jobs that I couldnt believe I was at.

Positive, healthy, loving relationships in your twenties... I dont know if anyone would disagree with it: I think theyre the exception, not the norm. People are either playing house really aggressively because theyre scared of what an uncertain time it is, or theyre avoiding commitment altogether.

I feel like a lot of the female relationships I see on TV or in movies are in some way free of the kind of jealousy and anxiety and posturing that has been such a huge part of my female friendships, which I hope lessens a little bit with age.

I mean, I - its 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. Ive been sort of taking this very long, stuttering period of moving out.