Home > Work > Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
41 " 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 , Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
42 " There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman. As hard as we have worked and as far as we have come, there are still so many forces conspiring to tell women that our concerns are petty, our opinions aren’t needed, that we lack the gravitas necessary for our stories to matter. That personal writing by women is no more than an exercise in vanity and that we should appreciate this new world for women, sit down, and shut up. "
43 " It made me feel silenced, lonely, and far away from myself, a feeling that I believe, next to extreme nausea sans vomiting, is the depth of human misery. "
44 " I didn't drink in the essence of the classroom. I didn't take legible notes or dance all night. I thought I would marry my boyfriend and grow old and sick of him. I thought I would keep my friends, and we'd make different, new memories. None of that happened. Better things happened. "
45 " I deserved kisses. I deserved to be treated like a piece of meat but also respected for my intellect. "
46 " Once, my little sister was walking down the street in her thick black glasses, and a homeless man muttered, “Talk nerdy to me. "
47 " I know that when I am dying, looking back, it will be women that I regret having argued with, women I sought to impress, to understand, was tortured by. Women I wish to see again, to see them smile and laugh and say, It was all as it should have been. "
48 " I am sorry (not to you but in a deeper way, sorry for my brain chemistry and who I am. "
49 " I’ve always had a talent for recognizing when I am in a moment worth being nostalgic for. "
50 " Barbie’s disfigured. It’s fine to play with her just as long as you keep that in mind. "
51 " 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. "
52 " 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. It makes me want to take a nap. "
53 " 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. "
54 " I can’t find a goddamn fucking job and I’m too fat to be a stripper,” I said as I polished off a stale croissant. "
55 " 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. "
56 " that’s also how I felt in high school, sure that my people were from elsewhere and going elsewhere and that they would recognize me when they saw me. "
57 " Luxury is nice, but creativity is nicer. "
58 " My friend Jenni calls them Sunshine Stealers. Men who have been at it a little too long, who are tired of the ride but can't get off. They're looking for some new form of energy, of approval. It's linked with sex, but it's not the same. What they want to take from you is way worse than your thong in the back of their Lexus. It's ideas, curiosity, an excitement about getting up in the morning and making things. "
59 " I think about death, when I lie in bed and imagine disintegrating, my skin going leathery and my hair petrifying and a tree growing out of my stomach, it’s a way to avoid what’s right in front of me. It’s a way to not be here, in the uncertainty of right now. "
60 " Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It’s something you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. "