Carrie Brownstein Quotes

I've always loved writing. Doing that at the same time as playing music can be tiring.

I think we as people struggle for what is meaningful in our lives, and I think that modern, contemporary life is as easy as it's ever been, for many, many people, and the amount of physical exertion, for most people, is less than it's ever been. I think that there is something about the ritual of making things more difficult that people find meaning in.

Twitter is sort of version of labeling, except with 140 characters instead of a labelmaker. It's the way of calling things out for what they are, wearing badges. Twitter is like the new Scarlet Letter.

It wasn't just like, "I want to make a record that sounds like classic rock" at all. It was more like, "I want to make a record that is a little more unsettling and maybe isn't as easily understood now." That just seemed more important, like, for me to make as an artist, than it was to make something to make people feel safe right away.

I think grief is a step towards strength because it allows you to be porous and take everything in, and have it transform you. What will sit within you is despairing, but at least it's feeling. You're not numb. Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.

It's hard to beat the visceral high of playing live and creating something spontaneous.

From a self-conscious standpoint, it's hard to see myself on a screen in a way that isn't just me playing music or doing something silly.

Living in Portland, which is a predominantly white city, the privilege and the luxury to be able to obsess over a certain kind of minutia, that I think, if you did not have that privilege, would never be bothersome. When people are worried about whether "local" means 100 miles, or 50 miles, or 10 miles from a grocery store, I just think, "Wow. What a privilege it is to have that as a major concern in your life." As opposed to, "Can we afford food tonight?" Sometimes I'm just shocked at what becomes concerning in these kind of communities.

Nothing is as nice as plugging in your guitar and turning up the volume really loud, just seeing what kind of beautiful noise you can make with it.

I think when you're writing from your own life, it's hard because you realize that people have their own assessment of how they look, and they don't know how you will describe them.

It's very common to think that we're always evolving, that we've changed so much from our younger selves, that within decades we've transformed into these different people. We like to think that. I feel in some ways that I am still so much my younger self. There are ways that I'm different: I feel like I'm wiser and kinder. But I think a lot of the impulses are still the same. I learned that.

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.

I think that the intentions are genuine in the search for authenticity, but it can tip over into absurdity so quickly. I just start to wonder, like, what authenticity even is, and whether we can even start to define it in such a globalized world.

I think that there's always an assumption, when a band goes on hiatus or stops playing, that there's some acrimony brewing under the surface.

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.

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.

I think hypochondria always plays a part in the healthcare landscape.

Practice. Learn and then unlearn - that's the trick in finding your own style of playing. You can't merely emulate, you have to innovate, or at the very least create your own path into the process.

It does feel great to be writing, but the process is sometimes excruciating.

I always felt that the most common thread in my life from when I was young until now has been a highly observant, very analytical mind.

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.

When I'm cynical, I seek out bands that are fully participating and trying to push something forward. Or I can just start playing music again - which is happening with a new project. But I think it's always a challenge to overcome cynicism and not get bogged down by a sense of nostalgia. That can be such a stifling feeling.

I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music.

I would not call myself an optimist, even though I would aspire to be. I am innately a skeptic. There's kind of an incessant dissatisfaction that I have, that I'm always trying to either expose or fight against or wrestle with.

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.

I've mostly been focusing on writing, and I've really enjoyed not playing music. It will always be part of my life, but I don't feel the immediate need to be playing for people.

The natural world operates by its own set of rules. The animal world, all the places that are feral and ungovernable, that's where I find a lot of inspiration. There is just as much beauty there, but there is also decay and violence.

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.

I think in some ways, whether you've ever actually been to Portland, people definitely understand this highly curated niche lifestyle, because a lot of people are sort of striving for that now. Or they're hating on it.

For a while I had somebody that came to clean my house that turned out to be in a band that I really loved.

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.

People are wearing fleece, which is a hard fabric to be angry in.

For me, being in shape means, like, not having cynicism out-weigh optimism on a daily basis.

Once you're away from music, I realize that's as intrinsic to who I am as anything else. That's the part that takes me out of my brain.

To me, that ugliness, that grotesqueness - that's the essence [of life]. That's where you realize, it's not about all the consonance and the harmony. It's all the parts that are wrong that help explain why we're drawn to something - what the mystery is - just as much as the beautiful things.

The internet is just a scary place. It's better to just go to the doctor. Don't let Google get inside your head. It will do bad things to you.

People give the words life through their own adoration or relationship to the work, and that's true of everything. You can't divorce critical or fan reaction. Once it exists, you forget that the words are arbitrary, or you start to remove value.

If your whole world of a band or music is taking place in a digital realm or on technological devices, it's all mediated through those things. That takes away from the experiential and sensual nature of music. That's a lot less exciting for me to think about. It's not my ideal way of living with music.

You can't bury a part of yourself that's so innate to who you've been, even if it's not for the sake of anything other than a pure enjoyment of it.

No matter what people are struggling with, or based on whatever. Sexuality, ethnicity, economic status, size. I don't wish smallness for anyone. It's a terrible place to live.

Wholeness is sort of a dubious concept. Because in terms of the human body and literal wholeness and structures, you think: "here are the structures that help make me whole." Family, or school, or the city I live in. When those structures are dysfunctional or decaying, you end up kind of Frankensteining pieces from everywhere in order to make yourself sated and comfortable and alive.

Just invest in apps. Just download apps and then pay yourself the dividend.

I got kind of tired of playing, I think. But I think it will be part of my life again, maybe.

I guess the role of art is to make something that is ambiguous and complex.

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.

I've learned to really enjoy video games. It's really toxic to have in your house, because it's really distracting.

The idea of self-effacement, the idea that you feel so powerless that the only tiny morsel of power you have is over your own ability to deny yourself food - that to me is a very profound and sad methodology and indicator of how powerless a lot of people feel in this world. That they will turn that onto themselves until they are physically smaller. I think it's affected my worldview a lot - just being sensitive and empathetic towards the ways people want to be small. I don't wish smallness for anyone.

I think one of the reasons that we are able to actually keep making music that we want to make, and that we're inspired by, is because there is a certain amount of instability constantly, and I think that mirrors the instability of any given life.