That's the artist's job, really: continually setting yourself free, and giving yourself new options and new ways of thinking about things.

When I was very little, I probably wanted to be more normal. I probably wanted the Laura Ashley bedroom, and instead I got thrift-store everything.

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.

It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.

The life you live in front of an audience is like an altered state - it's not totally real. I'm always, even in the course of one day, trying to find ways to balance both sides.

I don't tally the world, asking, "Would this annoy you? Would this annoy you?" That's so far removed from where I'm at when I'm in the trenches struggling with how to express things that I don't fully understand myself.

People who would not be using the word gender or thinking about gayness or trans-ness may actually, without even thinking about it, be not their own gender in their inner world. I think that's actually so normal, because female sexuality is sold to all of us. It doesn't just reach the eyes of men. You might not care about the idea of boobs or jugs or whatever, but it could impact your inner sexual life.