My parents were very supportive when I was growing up and have been all the way through.
— Lena Dunham
I think that people in the phase between being someone's kid and being someone's parent have always been uniquely narcissistic, but that social media and Twitter and LiveJournal make it really easy to navel-gaze in a way that you've never been able to before.
There's people who don't want to see bodies like mine or bodies like their own bodies.
I'm not great at dating, but I need to do it to relax.
I sometimes want to make a book of every tattoo I wanted to get before I actually got a tattoo, because there were so many awful ideas and concepts.
It's interesting how we often can't see the ways in which we are being strong - like, you can't be aware of what you're doing that's tough and brave at the time that you're doing it because if you knew that it was brave, then you'd be scared.
None of my actions have ever sort of been motored by the search for a husband or wondering if I was going to have a family someday or wanting to live in a really great house or thinking it would be really great to have a diamond.
You know, I always think of myself as sort of ready for every criticism.
I always imagined that having a baby is something that I'm going to keep in a private place, but maybe my curse is that all I'm going to want to do is tell everybody about what my birth process was like and what my children's nightmares are.
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.
When I graduated college I had a series of just humiliating jobs that I couldn't believe I was at.
Positive, healthy, loving relationships in your twenties... I don't know if anyone would disagree with it: I think they're the exception, not the norm. People are either playing house really aggressively because they're scared of what an uncertain time it is, or they're avoiding commitment altogether.
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 had no friends. I worried a lot.
You know, when I first started making online videos, there were a lot of filmmakers I befriended who were doing it too.
I thought I was really a radical, political person, which of course I am not.
It's interesting to see how other people react to an oversharer.
I sort of tend to equate tattoos with prisoners, punks or people with a high level of self-confidence. I don't necessarily have a covered-in-tattoos personality.
It's almost like when you're young, your friends take on the romance role, and then guys take on the role of your friends later.
You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.
Everyone needs something from me.
I have to write people who feel honest but also push our cultural ball forward.
I'm always afraid that I'm being unprofessional, yet I continue to sign all my e-mails 'xoxo.'
It's really hard to grow with another person.
I guess I think about doing stuff that nobody else has done.
I never start anything with a really overt, political, or even exactly artistic mission statement.
The parts I enjoy playing aren't really available to me. So I have to write them.
I had always written. I had written stories and poems. Then I started writing plays.
I've only recently realized that I have a radically different relationship with my parents than a lot of people.
No one wants to see a tattoo on a stomach.
I do think girls in their twenties accept certain kinds of lesser treatment than they would at other times in their lives.
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 - it's 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. I've been sort of taking this very long, stuttering period of moving out.
All my freakouts have been pretty private and directed at family pets and/or people I have been dating for too short a time to freak out at in that way.
I am anti-pants.
I seriously consider television to be the people's medium.
I feel like you don't know if someone's equipped for a romantic relationship until they're out of their twenties.
I love what I do, I love every minute of it.
