I believe, in general, that even people that are self-pitying, you can feel for them.

I've never been to the Oscars, but if I was ever invited to the Oscars, I would have this weird paranoia of terrorism. It just feels like The Poseidon Adventure, everyone in their tuxes. Somehow, I feel like the whole time I would be looking for where the nearest exit was, and in a cold sweat about some kind of man-made disaster, like a terrorist strike or something. It seems like such a scary, claustrophobic proposition.

As you get older, you realize just figuring out how to be nice to the people in your personal sphere is almost more challenging than trying to change the bigger culture.

People don't go to see things in the theater for the same reasons that I do. And movies are about mass audiences. And so moviegoers are going for a different kind of drug than for a certain kind of literary quality.

Girls' is a huge show, as far as buzz, and magazine covers, and getting a ton of copy, and awards. And yet I don't think the viewership is huge.

My impulse is to create an aesthetic that's about a humanistic approach to a world and trying to create compassion for all the characters.

I don't even give my scripts to friends because I just feel it's, like, I don't need one more set of opinions.