Top 200 Lena Dunham Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.”

— Lena Dunham

Featured in: Silly Quotes, Reading Quotes

2. “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.”

— Lena Dunham

3. “Family first. Work second. Revenge third.”

— Lena Dunham

4. “If someone doesn’t answer your email within six hours, it means they hate you.”

— Lena Dunham

5. “Don’t wait around for someone else to tell your story. Do it yourself by whatever means necessary.”

— Lena Dunham

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

6. “Don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself.”

— Lena Dunham

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

— Lena Dunham

8. “Every time I start feeling sexy I trip.”

— Lena Dunham

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

— Lena Dunham

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

— Lena Dunham

11. “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.”

— Lena Dunham

12. “Everyone needs something from me.”

— Lena Dunham

13. “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

14. “Scandal has made wine and popcorn seem like a viable, even healthful, meal.”

— Lena Dunham

15. “You should always go where there is a ‘you-shaped’ hole in the world.”

— Lena Dunham

16. “You don’t need to be flamboyant in your life to be flamboyant in your work.”

— Lena Dunham

17. “It’s not brave to do something that doesn’t scare you.”

— Lena Dunham

18. “I was raised on the internet.”

— Lena Dunham

19. “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

20. “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

21. “I think about my best friendship – which the Marnie-Hannah friendship in Girls is based on – as like a great romance of my young life.”

— Lena Dunham

22. “There’s a certain grace to having your heart broken.”

— Lena Dunham

23. “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

24. “Let’s call a spade a spade – a lot of times when you are a vegetarian it is a just not very effective eating disorder.”

— Lena Dunham

25. “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 not made up of compartments; you are one whole person. What gets said to you gets said to all of you.”

— Lena Dunham

26. “I value my health and my happiness. And I’ve realized exercise can give me both of those things.”

— Lena Dunham

27. “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.”

— Lena Dunham

28. “You’ve learned a new rule and it’s simple: don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself, like that bunny in Runaway Bunny runs to its mother, but you are the mother and you’ll see that later and be very, very proud.”

— Lena Dunham

29. “I just don’t want to be around people who don’t hate everything in their life right now.”

— Lena Dunham

30. “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.”

— Lena Dunham

31. “I’m always afraid that I’m being unprofessional, yet I continue to sign all my e-mails ‘xoxo.’”

— Lena Dunham

32. “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.”

— Lena Dunham

33. “It’s okay to change your mind. About a feeling, a person, a promise of love.”

— Lena Dunham

34. “It’s become horribly and offensively popular to say that someone is on the autism spectrum, so all I’ll say is his inability to notice when I was crying had to be some kind of pathology.”

— Lena Dunham

35. “Respect isn’t something you command through intimidation and intellectual bullying. It’s something you build through a long life of treating people how you want to be treated.”

— Lena Dunham

36. “I remember asking my mom, “Do you think that I will ever have enough money to live outside of your house?” And she would be like, “You just never know.””

— Lena Dunham

37. “I think that it’s very important to be with someone who makes you feel like the best version of yourself. In some sense, your partner is a mirror, and you have to like what they’re reflecting back at you.”

— Lena Dunham

38. “I’m not jealous in traditional ways – of boyfriends or babies or bank accounts – but I do covet other women’s styles of being.”

— Lena Dunham

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

— Lena Dunham

40. “I refresh Twitter as thoughtlessly as some twirl their hair.”

— Lena Dunham

41. “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.”

— Lena Dunham

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

— Lena Dunham

43. “When someone anonymous tells me I’m fat, that’s not a person to me. If they’re not going to acknowledge me as a person, I’m certainly not going to acknowledge them as a person.”

— Lena Dunham

44. “I would be a horrible girlfriend at this point in my life, because I’m both needy and unavailable.”

— Lena Dunham

45. “I would rather spend my entire life doing nothing than have my name attached to something mediocre.”

— Lena Dunham

46. “You will find,” she says, “that there’s a certain grace to having your heart broken.” I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it.”

— Lena Dunham

47. “But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle.”

— Lena Dunham

48. “Okay, ‘Best Party Ever’ – to me, that’s like saying ‘Best Gym Ever’ or ‘Best Nature Documentary Ever,’ like how good can it really be?”

— Lena Dunham

49. “My fears came true: People called me fat and hideous, and I lived. And now I keep living.”

— Lena Dunham

50. “I can’t imagine a passionate affair with a native man.”

— Lena Dunham