“My father wasn’t just taciturn – it was like he didn’t want to be heard.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“When real is gone, then there is no longer a litmus test for that which deviates from it. It’s all real because it’s all ‘real.’”
― Carrie Brownstein
“There’s some horrible connotations in the word ‘reunion.’”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With so much of music blurring the lines between ersatz and authenticity, at least the ‘Rock Band’ game is a tribute to rock rather than an affront.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“From the ashes of Bauhaus, Love and Rockets transformed its grandiosity and excesses into boldness and virtuosity. Plus, it wasn’t afraid of a catchy hook or two.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I try, in the present, to not exalt the past because I think that’s such a way of diminishing the present. And it’s hard to live like that.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With sociolinguistics, after covering the basics of the field, I focused on discourse analysis.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think music took hold of me and captured my imagination at such a formative age that I ascribe a mysteriousness to it, and I exalt it and take it seriously in a way that I think has just permeated my life ever since. And I’m less interested in music that is novelty or jokey or ironic.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’m such a big fan of ‘The Bachelor.’”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I don’t think I realized right away that I was switching from being a fan into being a performer. I’ve always tried to maintain that duality, because I think fandom is a way of being porous and curious, but it did feel like a step forward.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I felt like power meant that you had to be engaged in a certain kind of struggle by force of movement and battle – and that’s very exhausting. Now, power is more about certainty and stillness and realizing that the infrastructures that we gather around and worship are the least powerful things.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“The game Rock Band has been haunting me like a bad ring tone. It gets stuck in my head and momentarily effaces all that I love about music.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think my sister loves being an observer more than I do.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“The hedonistic lifestyle is difficult to achieve when you’re still carrying your own gear. Trust me that you don’t feel glamorous with a 60-pound amp in your arms; it’s a lot less sexy than toting a vodka gimlet and impossible to do in heels.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Much of the music I remember from camp was unofficial: the songs a counselor would play for us on acoustic guitar or that an older camper would sing after telling us a tale of his hard-knock life. We couldn’t get enough of ‘One Tin Soldier’ or ‘Cat’s in the Cradle.’”
― Carrie Brownstein
“My father was a corporate lawyer. He went to work in a suit and tie. He had a secretary. He left the house before seven A.M. His professional life felt generic, like a backdrop, a signifier more than a life: office job.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Rock Band is more like Stairmaster than it is like rock ‘n’ roll – it’s the same steps with different degrees of difficulty.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“It’s hard to beat the visceral high of playing live and creating something spontaneous.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I will say, as a woman, when you put a mustache on, you find out a lot of things about yourself.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“For a while I had somebody that came to clean my house that turned out to be in a band that I really loved.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Well, in some ways I had sort of the opposite experience of other people that are sort of dreaming of being in a rock band. I was dreaming of like corporate lunches and just like, and I’m not really joking. Like the whole idea to me was really appealing.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“It turns out I’m not very good at working with a traditional boss.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“After Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006 I had very little desire to play music. It took well over three years before picking up a guitar meant anything to me other than an exercise.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“It was writing about music for NPR – connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community – that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I have no desire to play music unless I need music.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a ‘maybe,’ a ‘possibility.’ But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Music has always been my constant, my salvation. It’s cliche to write that, but it’s true.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Over the years, music put a weapon in my hand and words in my mouth, it backed me up and shielded me, it shook me and scared me and showed me the way; music opened me up to living and being and feeling.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“To really be tortured by a song, it needs to be more than just something you don’t like or don’t get; it has to make your skin crawl by getting under it. Strangely, that last clause could describe provocative or daring music, as well.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’ll admit that I’m not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Rihanna has guts and she always seems to be singing from someplace honest, dark and fierce.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’ve never understood people who play up the artifice of music.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’m pretty horrible at relationships and haven’t been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on – returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy – is what I know; that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With music, I get to a much darker place. Where I’m able to go with ‘Portlandia’ has a wider range, but also a brighter range.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I don’t think I would live outside of the Northwest. I think the quality of life in Portland is really good. People move from intense, high-powered jobs, and move to Portland, work half as much and live twice as good.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I really don’t know what to do when my life is not chaotic.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With Portlandia, I don’t think our intention is always to find something funny. Sometimes the humor comes from taking something really seriously. We’re okay with making somebody feel uncomfortable or uneasy.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“There was a clarity to the Nineties. It was pre-9/11, before that anxiety kicked in that exists right now about the financial crisis or terrorism. We were all just going to move forward into the millennium and everything was always going to get better. Then, whoops, that didn’t happen.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I feel like I came in comedy’s side door, and still feel very fraudulent in many ways.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There’s that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we’re doing sometimes, or why it matters. It’s our existential crisis.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“For film and television, it’s interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifesting their affections are the correct ones. It’s not just about being a fan, it’s about how you perform your fandom. That’s always been interesting to me.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I was always drawn to performing. I took improv and acting classes during the summers and was involved in middle and high school plays. But when I discovered indie and punk music in high school, those things sort of took over.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I read a lot; fiction and non-fiction are the mediums I find most edifying and inspiring. I watch movies and listen to music and take lots and lots of walks. Nature is a nice reset button for me, it’s how I get a lot of thinking done.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I am a horrible visual artist. I can’t fix a car, sew, knit, cook, etc. Statistically, there is more I don’t do than do.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I associate Taylor Swift with some pretty kinky stuff.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’ve been trying to immerse myself in the narratives of other people. I try to not isolate myself as much. It is really hard. People that are sensitive, you just feel too porous sometimes. There’s this inertia that sets in, and it’s hard to get out of bed. I think knowing that other people go through it is really reassuring.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I love my friends, but I feel pretty autonomous.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I like to connect with people through my work. That’s my favorite way – meetings of the minds, fans at a show. Those are nice mediated ways of hanging out.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“When the band first started, it was so much about carving out some space for myself and our audience and our songs.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“There’s something that feels very timeless about fandom.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“So many things can be filtered through fandom – joy, compassion, love.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“’Beasts of the Southern Wild’ was one of those films that I felt like I could dismiss because it received so many accolades, but then I watched it and was won over.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“The ‘New York Times’ is my homepage because it forces me to go right into the news.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I get mad at myself when I get news from Twitter before I get it from a regular news source. Then I’m off to a bad start: getting the second-hand, filtered experience all day long.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“In the early and mid 1990s, every musician I knew was obsessed with Helium. The ‘Pirate Prude’ EP and ‘Pat’s Trick’ played on repeat at nearly every gathering I attended. And we didn’t just listen to these records – we discussed them, the worlds they opened, novelistic and strange.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“In Olympia, Washington, many of us were writing songs that were the equivalent of bloodletting: This is the sound a wound makes; this is the screech of a scar. But Mary Timony was always more kaleidoscope than microscope, creating magical worlds replete with weaponry or sorcery.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’ve always felt unclaimed.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“My entire style of playing was built around somebody else playing guitar with me, a story that, on its own, sounds unfinished.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“My own relationship to food was healthy. I was lean and athletic with a high metabolism. I could eat half a pizza with a side of breadsticks and wash it down with soda. I never dieted or denied myself food.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“My father was hard to know and gave little indication that there was much to know. He claimed he remembered almost nothing about his childhood.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“When my father came out to his mom, my grandmother said, ‘You waited for your father to die; why couldn’t you have waited for me to die?’ I knew then that I never want to contribute to the corrosiveness of wanting someone to stay hidden.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“One of my earliest childhood memories is my father taking me in the evening to Samena Swim & Recreation Club in Bellevue.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Only in retrospect can I find clues to my father’s gayness. Sometimes the dull detritus of our pasts become glaring strands once you realize they form a pattern, a lighted path to the present.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Kissing is kind of scary.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’m a huge Quasi fan.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Sleater-Kinney is a band that we hold close to our hearts as well; it’s not something that we’re cynical or jaded about. We only feel gratefulness and appreciation for other people’s enthusiasm about it. We would never be annoyed by that.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With Sleater-Kinney, we have a lot of earnest fans, and we were an earnest band.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’ve realized that I have a lot of different loves, and I want to pursue writing, but I can never divorce myself from music.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I’d rather do spontaneous and silly work like ThunderAnt than have somebody’s film on my shoulders.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“A lot of music for me was about – I mean, aside from the fun and challenge of writing and being really good friends with my bandmates – getting to perform.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“One summer, when I was elementary-school age, my neighbors and I built guitars and keyboards out of scrap wood, painted them in bright colors, and formed the cover band Lil’ ‘D’ Duran Duran. We didn’t make our own noise or even pretend to play our fake instruments.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I went to a liberal arts college wherein grading was qualitative and we had to write our own evaluations.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“’Wii Music’ elevates the scope of music video games by moving beyond commentary on what music is – as ‘Rock Band’ and ‘Guitar Hero’ do – to suggesting what it could be. Yet I’m still left wondering: Couldn’t it be more?”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Not even the creators of ‘Rock Band’ could possibly believe that playing the game is tantamount to making your own music. There is, however, a sad similarity between ‘Rock Band’ and some actual bands, and that is the attempt at realness.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“In the realm of fakery, I would choose ‘Rock Band’ over ‘American Idol’ or over any of the other flimsy truths masquerading as music.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“When people grow up with a family characterized by chaos and uncertainty and fragility, you look for a substitution for that.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Music was a means through which I could meet people and sort of begin the process of exploring who I was or who I could be.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Meals and eating and that sort of ritual of gathering at a table is such a part of childhood, and that was such a strange moment. It made me nervous to watch my mom cook for us and then not engage in the act of eating with us.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“When I was 16, 17 years old, I became aware of music coming out of Olympia, Wash., which is the state capitol and about an hour south of Seattle. And there were bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile and Heavens To Betsy, and for the first time, I heard my story being explained to me, being sung to me.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“The process of coming out, as much as other people want to couch it in terms of politics, it’s a very personal journey.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“My sister’s great. She’s very bright; she’s very private.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I really like sardonicism and wit. I love the writing of Joy Williams and Lorrie Moore. I like Tina Fey, Amy Schumer.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Writing ‘Monitor Mix’ was a very edifying and inspiring few years.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“In the high-stakes and elitist world of music collecting and fandom, we operate from an ab ovo perspective. The seed, the first incarnation – that is the most pure, the most lauded. Minutemen trumps Firehose, Throwing Muses beats Belly, Joy Division over New Order, Operation Ivy ruled Rancid, Undertones instead of That Petrol Emotion.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“At its core, kitsch feels like something less than art; it panders to the middle and is flagrantly anti-art, though it often apes or references art. This referential, ersatz quality is why it’s so fun to collect.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“The value of kitsch exists in its novelty and in its connotations to more legitimate counterparts.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I have really never aligned myself with hipsterdom or coolness.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Curiosity is what keeps me open to a sense of hope. It staves off negativity.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I want to have a sense of openness and optimism, even if that means being open to things that are potentially dark.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think that the most well-intentioned, optimistic, creative people often live for the moment, and for ‘Portlandia,’ our goals were always very sort of short-term and attainable.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“That’s so rare in the world of TV or film to have a genuine friendship turn into something that people watch, that people relate to. That’s so unique.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“To me, it’s exciting that women are dominating the pop charts.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think that there’s so many versions of femininity, and in terms of gender as a binary construct, that seems to be being dismantled.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“There comes a time as you continue to write and work on scripts and screenplays where you realize that you have opinions about the next step of the process, and you kind of want more control over the translation from page to screen.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I really feel like social media – it’s like all these tiny stages that you put yourself on. And you come to rely on these likes and favorites, and it’s this applause and this validation that you start to need. Then it’s like you don’t know how to soothe yourself, and I think it’s very pernicious.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I feel like I live a pretty quiet life. I like to focus on work and friends, and I love being in nature.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Celebrity culture is… it’s not something that I’m attracted to. I guess I don’t think of myself in that way, but potentially other people do. I feel I’m at the far periphery of that.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“So much of my intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw my way out of it.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I love Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore: such great short-story writers.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I loved ‘Just Kids’ by Patti Smith.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I love James Baldwin’s autobiographical writing.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I actually think that Republican administrations are better for music. The Reagan era was such a great era for punk and indie rock.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“When it comes to music, we should be hoping for as outlandish a Republican candidate as we can get.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I like playing someone with a certain stability at the periphery of the madness.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“People barely have anything to say in 140 characters. The last thing we need is a bunch of discursive rambling on Twitter.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I willed myself into being.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I wish I’d lived in New York in my early twenties. Or learned to speak more languages at a young age. I didn’t do either.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Nutty fans are fine with me, as I have no known nut allergy. In general, though, it’s best to carry an EpiPen to deal with outbreaks of fan nuttiness.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think one of the scariest things about depression is that it exists along with the happiness and the joy, and it kind of plays with it and sucks the color from it.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think I was so grateful, in the years after Sleater-Kinney broke up or went on hiatus or whatever you want to call it, to find ‘Portlandia’ and co-create ‘Portlandia’ with Fred Armisen, which allows for levity, allows for the same kind of kinetic energy, but channeled through absurdity and surrealism.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think people would describe a lot of Sleater-Kinney as unsettling. And I don’t think our best moments have sonic assonance to them. I think that we are best with a little bit of… a caustic attitude and tone.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think a lot of people want stories or lives to have very distinct beginnings, middles, and endings. Generally, I think things are a little more fluid than that.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“What I appreciate about Sleater-Kinney is that we did six records, and they all felt different. It was a band that was able to encapsulate different sensibilities because we were focusing on it as music and art and not as a statement.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I always find that nostalgia is sort of like memory without the pain. And that’s why it feels so good to kind of bask in that, and I think it can be deceptively comforting.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Of course, ‘Portlandia’ is all about ways that people curate their physical space and their life.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“There’s something about mean-spiritedness that has a way of distancing an audience.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Sometimes when you look at somebody else’s career or choices or family, there’s almost a comfort in knowing there’s another option.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think there’s a lot of wonderful comics that leave you hanging in a state of apprehension or anxiety before alleviating that tension with a joke.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“There is a certain comfort that comes from feeling intellectually apart from phenomena. That you have the luxury of time to reflect or apply scholarly thinking to art and culture.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think that art, and making music or comedy, is a way of positing yourself on the map and then trying to find other people out there with you.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Writing isn’t necessarily about what one knows but what one wants to know.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I think that there is something about the ritual of making things more difficult that people find meaning in.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“Shoes are a great invention. They keep us from stepping on nails. Your feet stay clean and warm and dry.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I grew up outside of Seattle and have lived here my whole life, and I think that there is a culture of questioning and guilt. Almost an ‘anti-ambition.’”
― Carrie Brownstein
“The Northwest, to make a generalization, is a fairly sensitive populace. Slightly self-conscious and very self-reflexive.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“I definitely love performing live because there are moments of spontaneity. And as much as you’re performing on stage, I feel like the audience is performing, too.”
― Carrie Brownstein
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