Dunham Quotes

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

What happens over the next few months is like the plot of a children's movie, the kind where a dog finds its owner in spite of insurmountable odds and prohibitive geography. ~ Lena Dunham

I've always had a talent for recognizing when I am in a moment worth being nostalgic for. ~ Lena Dunham

It's not brave to do something that doesn't scare you. ~ Lena Dunham

Achmed: Two Jews walk into a bar...
Jeff: No no no no no
Achmed: You don't let Jews in your bar? You racist bastard. ~ Jeff Dunham

I have to write people who feel honest but also push our cultural ball forward. ~ Lena Dunham

I felt like my parents were always involved with abstraction, and I wanted to do something very specific. ~ Lena Dunham

We just got a tour bus. I didn't know tour buses could be this nice. It's just me, Brian Haner the guitar guy, the tour manager and a writer. We laugh ourselves silly. Apparently we're going to have a road dog, a miniature pincher. It's the smallest they've ever seen. How masculine am I going to look, working with dolls and a miniature dog? ~ Jeff Dunham

I think people like Lena Dunham really opened up the door to what was possible, and they've inspired young women to go into filmmaking and writing and directing and acting in a way that maybe they didn't before, because now there is a path and there are jobs. ~ Judd Apatow

My muses were all the incredible, iconic women of glamour in Hollywood that I have worked with over 15 years. Anjelica Huston, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lena Dunham, Viola Davis, Rihanna, Demi Moore ... ~ Zac Posen

I love what I do, I love every minute of it. ~ Lena Dunham

People are often surprised by the fact that I laugh a lot, that I look like Lena Dunham, and that I don't want to make relationship dramas for the rest of my career. ~ Hannah Fidell

The American head of state grew up with a mother on food stamps. The British head of state grew up with a mother on postage stamps. Is that a contrast that fills you with pride? ~ Johann Hari

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. ~ Lena Dunham

My mother and my father have always supported me. Now in their eighties, they actually clamor onto the tour bus with me once or twice a year so they can watch the performances and hear the crowds. Traveling with eighty-something-year-olds on a tour bus ... there has to be some sort of reality show in that. ~ Jeff Dunham

Very few women have become famous for being who they actually are, nuanced and imperfect. When honesty happens, it's usually couched in self-ridicule or self-help. Dunham doesn't apologize like that-she simply tells her story as if it might be interesting. The result is shocking and radical because it is utterly familiar. Not That Kind of Girl is hilarious, artful, and staggeringly intimate; I read it shivering with recognition. ~ Miranda July

Wrecking civilization one story at a time."

"That hardest day in any cancer patient's life is the day after he's cured."

"Some of us aren't made strong. We're extras, made out of the leftovers the gods had after making the good men. "
--Inclinations of the Solar Winds

"Just Foxing along--another day, another song. ~ T. Fox Dunham

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. ~ Lena Dunham

I used to be the youngest person on the set [of Bored To Death]. Now I'm very often the oldest person on the set. I feel lucky about that, to be honest. Lena [Dunham], by the way is a doll to me. So much fun to work with and really open. ~ Richard Masur

I didn't know why this was happening. The cruel reality of anxiety is that you never quite do. At the moments it should logically strike, I am fit as a fiddle. On a lazy afternoon, I am seized by a cold dread. ~ Lena Dunham

Related: if someone says "I'm not going to hurt you" or "I'm not a creep," they probably are. Noncreeps don't feel the need to say it all the time. Never ~ Lena Dunham

My relationship to eating, my relationship to critiquing my own shape, all of that has changed since I've started viewing my body much more as a tool to do my work. ~ Lena Dunham

I've always said that instead of watching a guy juggle seven things amazingly I would rather see a really bad juggler who's really funny. ~ Jeff Dunham

And then, I made myself sick to my stomach for an apologie that never came. ~ Lena Dunham

I wanted to be a poet. I had a really romantic idea about what that would mean. My parents knew some poets, and I liked how they dressed and acted, but I didn't really acknowledge that I only liked reading some bits of poetry while I was peeing or something. ~ Lena Dunham

You know, I always think of myself as sort of ready for every criticism. ~ Lena Dunham

When she writes, which isn't often, I get insanely jealous of the way her mind works, the fact that she seems to create for her own pleasure and not to make herself known. ~ Lena Dunham

Jeff: The drive from the valley?
Peanut: Was bad as hell!
Jeff: Traffic?
Peanut: Sucked like hell!
Jeff: Drivers?
Peanut: Angry as hell!
Jeff: And you?
Peanut: Were scared as hell!
Jeff: Parking?
Peanut: Sucked more like hell!
Jeff: So?
Peanut: We're in hell! ~ Jeff Dunham

Over time, my belief in many things has wavered: marriage, the afterlife, Woody Allen. ~ Lena Dunham

A healthy dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It's what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion. ~ Ann Dunham

When I graduated college I had a series of just humiliating jobs that I couldn't believe I was at. ~ Lena Dunham

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. ~ Lena Dunham

I'm always having to be told to brush my hair. ~ Lena Dunham

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. ~ Lena Dunham

I think maybe one reason why ventriloquists are looked down on is because it's very difficult to be funny. I think what happens is that people get a dummy, they learn the technique of ventriloquism, they memorize the script, they think they're in show business. ~ Jeff Dunham

Growing up, I thought it would be great if I could do big theaters. Now we're doing arenas. ~ Jeff Dunham

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing. ~ Lena Dunham

I am grown up. That's why I cooked all this food! ~ Lena Dunham

Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, had quite an interesting life, shot through with coincidences. Stanley Ann was some mom
and by 'some mom,' it's meant that she was a globetrotting, oil-rep-marrying, CIA-front-employed, twelve-language-speaking, International Mom of Mystery. ~ Mondo Frazier

I'm half Jewish half WASP. ~ Lena Dunham

On Girls I like being a mouthpiece for the issues I think young females face today. It's always shocking when people question whether it's a feminist show. How could a show about women exploring women not be? Feminism isn't a dirty word. It's not like we're a deranged group who think women should take over the planet, raise our young on our own and eliminate men from the picture. Feminism is about women having all the rights that men have. ~ Lena Dunham

I can't wait to be eighty. So I can shock people by saying "rim job" in casual conversation. ~ Lena Dunham

The British lady, trying to make conversation, asked Zoe and me what our parents did if we were "bad girls." "When I'm bad, I get a time-out," Zoe said. "When I'm bad," I announced, "my father sticks a fork in my vagina." This is hard to share without alarm bells sounding. We're taught to listen to little girls, particularly when they say things about being sodomized with cutlery. Also my father makes sexually explicit artwork so he's probably already on the FBI's fork-in-vagina radar. ~ Lena Dunham

I am literally obsessed with Lena Dunham. She's, like, my favorite person in the world. I follow her on Twitter; I read her every day. ~ Emma Watson

I'm a fan of Louis C.K., I'm a fan of Lena Dunham. I love shows about people that other people would consider unlikable, or, like, the work of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks. ~ Jill Soloway

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. ~ Lena Dunham

Women saying, 'I'm not a feminist' is my greatest pet peeve. Do you believe that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you're a feminist. ~ Lena Dunham

So Achmed if you've been in my suitcase this entire time how have you been getting through security? Oh thats easy they open the suitcase and i say 'ello my name is lindey lohan! ~ Jeff Dunham

[In my bio] is no drunk driving, there's no DUI's, there's no possession of cocaine, none of that stuff so you know, I don't know if that's good or bad. Everybody loves dirty laundry. ~ Jeff Dunham

I never start anything with a really overt, political, or even exactly artistic mission statement. ~ Lena Dunham

It would probably be too easy a cop out to say that just Republican males hate me. Though there's a large swath of them, for sure. ~ Lena Dunham

I should stop apologizing for being overly analytical about this, even though I am sorry (not to you but in a deeper way, sorry for my brain chemistry and who I am. I do what I can that isn't heroin to modify it but I was born as anxious and obsessive as any incredibly gorgeous child ever could be.) ~ Lena Dunham

I wasn't concerned about the hardships because I always felt I was doing what I had to do, what I wanted to do and what I was destined to do. ~ Katherine Dunham

That being said, it's horrible when people you hate get things you want. ~ Lena Dunham

Don't put yourself in situations you'd like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself. ~ Lena Dunham

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. ~ Lena Dunham

There are two types of women in particular who inspire my envy. The first is an ebullient one, happily engaged from morning until night, able to enjoy things like group lunches, spontaneous vacations to Cartagena with gangs of girlfriends, and planning other people's baby showers. The bigger existential questions don't seem to plague her, and she can clean her stove without ever once thinking, What's the point? It just gets dirty again anyway and then we die. Why don't I just stick my head ... ~ Lena Dunham

I'm not on Twitter, but I am on Instagram and follow Lena Dunham and Usher. ~ Michelle Dockery

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

You dance because you have to. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me. ~ Katherine Dunham

After I avoided all my calls for another day, Mrs. Dunham came by my room and politely told me that if she had to speak to my panicked mother one more time, ahe would very publicly set herself on fire. ~ Brittany Cavallaro

I started in a business background, but then it was like, 'you know, I can't do math,' so I changed it to a liberal arts degree and got my Bachelor of Arts in Communications and it made sense. ~ Jeff Dunham

My uncle's a lawyer and I remember going to see him in court and thinking, 'That's cool, too bad I could never be a lawyer.' ~ Lena Dunham

Most women harbor dreams of a fairytale wedding and marriage. And while some do achieve it all, they are in the minority. For most of us the reality of living out our daily lives with another person by our side demands compromise, cooperation and commitment. Yes, it takes two to make a marriage, but someone has to take the lead. Why not let that person be you? ~ Lori Colombo-Dunham

We took a hike in Malibu and shared ice cream. I stayed with him while he had walking pneumonia, heating soup and pouring him glass after glass of ginger ale and feeling his fevered forehead as he slept. He warned me of the life that was coming for me if I wasn't careful. Success was a scary thing for a young person, he said. I was twenty-four and he was thirty-three ("Jesus's age," he reminded me more than a few times). There was something tender about him, broken and gentle, and I could imagine that sex with him might be similar. I wouldn't have to pretend like I did with other guys. Maybe we would both cry. Maybe it would feel just as good as sharing a bed. On Valentine's Day, I put on lace underwear and begged him to please, finally, have sex with me. The litany of excuses he presented in response was comic in its tragedy: "I want to get to know you." "I don't have a condom." "I'm scared, because I just like you too much." He took an Ambien and fell asleep, arm over my side, and as I lay there, wide awake and itchy in my lingerie set, it occurred to me: this was humiliating, unsexy, and, worst sin of all, boring. This wasn't comfort. This was paralysis. This was distance passing for connection. I was being desexualized in slow motion, becoming a teddy bear with breasts. ~ Lena Dunham

I thought I wanted to be a journalist or a novelist. ~ Lena Dunham

If we follow the Buddhist logic that we are becoming part of glory of the universe, one huge consciousness, well, that's just too much togetherness for my taste. I couldn't even do a group art project in second grade. How am I going to share understanding with the rest of the creation? If this proves to be the case, I'm too much of a loner for death, but I'm also scared of being lonely. Where does that leave me? ~ Lena Dunham

A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things. ~ Jeff Dunham

Here's 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 Horvath's dying grandmother ~ Lena Dunham

I don't really read reviews ... That's not where my attention goes. ~ Lena Dunham

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. ~ Lena Dunham

When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus derive classes in which the members have the greatest amount of resemblance to one another and the greatest amount of difference from the members of other classes. But suppose that, instead of organizing knowledge, you set out to organize ignorance and prejudice. You will then do precisely the opposite.You will keep the classification vague and flexible, so that it can be made to include just whatever individuals you choose. ~ Barrows Dunham

I'm born originally in Toronto, and I have what I call my 'Fame' story. I took a Greyhound bus and went to Alvin Ailey and received Dunham, Horton, Graham technique there, but I could never take my eyes off of Balanchine doing 'Nutcracker'; to me he's the best who ever did it. ~ Laurieann Gibson

A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on. ~ Katherine Dunham

I learned that people are much more game to mock their own personas than you would think. ~ Lena Dunham

Jeff: You know, you don't have to do this.
Walter: Yeah, I could get a real job.
Jeff: What would you do?
Walter: I wanna be a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Walter: What the hell's so funny?
Jeff: At Wal-Mart, what would be your opening line?
Walter: Oh.
Walter: Welcome to Wal-Mart. Get your shit and get out!
Walter: Have a nice day! ~ Jeff Dunham

In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge has kept me from sinking. ~ Lena Dunham

I'm a pretty good ventriloquist, but it's the entertainment value and the laughs that keep people sitting there and wanting more. ~ Jeff Dunham

Youth, with all its accompanying risks, humiliations, and uncertainties, the pressure to do it all before it's too late. ~ Lena Dunham

When I was nine, I wrote a vow of celibacy on a piece of paper and ate it. ~ Lena Dunham

When I'm playing a character, I am never allowed to explicitly state the the takeaway message of the scenes I'm performing - after all, part of the dramatic conflict is that the person I'm portraying doesn't really know it yet. ~ Lena Dunham

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. ~ Lena Dunham

Achmed the Dead Terrorist: Knock, knock.
Jeff Dunham: Who's there?
Achmed the Dead Terrorist: Me, I kill you! ~ Jeff Dunham

The fact is that I write under duress, often in my bed, often at the last minute. I'm kind of a binge writer I would say, which I don't support. I was always kind of that way. Probably the time I was the most regular as a writer was college. It was like, what else is there to do when you're living in the Midwest studying creative writing? ~ Lena Dunham

I seriously consider television to be the people's medium. ~ Lena Dunham

I especially like it when a guy starts out rude, explains that it's a defense mechanism, and then turns even ruder once I get to know him. ~ Lena Dunham

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. ~ Lena Dunham

Is what's manifesting as a fear actually some instinct to resist being young? Youth, with all its accompanying risks, humiliations, and uncertainties, the pressure to do it all before it's too late. Is the sense of imminent death bound up in the desire to leave some kind of a legacy? ~ Lena Dunham

After receiving the customary answer that the government was performing superbly, I generally asked the person how they arrived at this conclusion. They often cited the construction of schools and clinics, solar panels and paved roads as signs of progress. Mind you, the majority of this infrastructure was paid for and coordinated by the United States and other NATO countries. Most were built by U.S. and other Coalition Forces, not the Afghan government, and not the Afghan citizens. The typical Afghan citizen did not realize this however. Most were under the impression that their own government had planned, funded and overseen these projects. None ever stopped to think about how their government had miraculously come up with the billions of dollars necessary to complete these developments. ~ Jennifer Dunham

I think a fair amount about the fact that we're all going to die. It occurs to me at incredibly inopportune moments - I'll be standing in a bar, having managed to get an attractive guy to laugh, and I'll be laughing, too, and maybe dancing a little bit, and then everything goes slo-mo for a second and I'll think: Are these people aware that we're all going to the same place in the end? ~ Lena Dunham

I taught myself computer. Then Macintosh came along, and it became a really bad addiction. If I wasn't in show business, I'd have pocket protectors growing out of my chest. I do everything on it. It's kinda sick. ~ Jeff Dunham

I am a feminist. And I'm so glad that Lena Dunham exists, because she is one too, and she's quite vocal about it. Yes, women have more freedom and more influence than ever, but it's hardly equal. It's just not. ~ Claire Danes

Sometimes I have given my husband a manuscript to read that has turned out to have fantastic rave reviews and he'll tell me it is no good. Well, if I didn't know him as well as I know him I would be terribly depressed. ~ Katherine Dunham

I was raised on the Internet. ~ Lena Dunham

And one day you'll get out of bed to pee, and someone will say, "I hate it when you leave" and you will WANT to rush back. You'll think, stuff like this only happens to characters played by Jennifer Garner, right? but it's happening to you and it keeps happening even when you cry or misbehave or show him how terrible you are at planning festive group outings. He seems to be there without reservation. He pays attention. He listens. He seems to want to stay. ~ Lena Dunham

Life is like a basketball game, you can shoot but miss. sometimes you even lose a game. There is always a next tournament, but never a time to give up. ~ David Dunham

Let this book take you to the stars and beyond. ~ Lena Dunham

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

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

I would go to work from 9 to 6, go home, nap for two hours, then write from 8 to 2 a.m. ~ Lena Dunham