I think Grace [Dunham] and I are always working from a personal place, and the fact that these were issues that we'd been talking about in our own families really clicked, but also Jason's [Benjamin] passion about it and his clear sense that this was going to be something emotional and remarkable to watch. It was very hard not get excited about it and want to help in any way we could.

I had always written. I had written stories and poems. Then I started writing plays.

I never sort of thought of myself as a comedy writer, by nature.

Basically my new litmus test for people is, do they make me hear about a blow job they gave in the first ten minutes of us talking? And if they didn't then I can feel excited.

I can’t imagine a passionate affair with a native man

I thought about starting a novella club because it seemed less ambitious.

I spent all my time on my movies worried that people were eating and that the schedule was being kept, so to have experts in those areas giving me the brain space as a writer and director is huge.