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

Great Art Wild

Music has always been my constant, my salvation. It's cliche to write that, but it's true.

Music Write Ways

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

Relationship Moving On Turning

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

Love Us Two

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

Art Age Yourself

My father wasn't just taciturn - it was like he didn't want to be heard.

Carrie Brownstein

Want Us Turn

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

Power Men Age

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

Work Nature Love

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

Friendship World Watch

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

Music Worlds World

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

Versions Version Think

I love my friends, but I feel pretty autonomous.

Carrie Brownstein

Love Us Ton

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

Mom Men Were

I really don't know what to do when my life is not chaotic.

Carrie Brownstein

Life T Really

I want to have a sense of openness and optimism, even if that means being open to things that are potentially dark.

Carrie Brownstein

Want Tim Things

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

Work Time Age

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

Music Good Writing

To me, it's exciting that women are dominating the pop charts.

Carrie Brownstein

Women Men Art

With sociolinguistics, after covering the basics of the field, I focused on discourse analysis.

Carrie Brownstein

Wit Used Use

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

Music Your You

I like playing someone with a certain stability at the periphery of the madness.

Carrie Brownstein

Yin Wit T

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

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

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

One of my earliest childhood memories is my father taking me in the evening to Samena Swim & Recreation Club in Bellevue.

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

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

So many things can be filtered through fandom - joy, compassion, love.

Carrie Brownstein

The value of kitsch exists in its novelty and in its connotations to more legitimate counterparts.

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'm a huge Quasi fan.

Carrie Brownstein

Curiosity is what keeps me open to a sense of hope. It staves off negativity.

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 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

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

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

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

I really like sardonicism and wit. I love the writing of Joy Williams and Lorrie Moore. I like Tina Fey, Amy Schumer.

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 will say, as a woman, when you put a mustache on, you find out a lot of things about yourself.

Carrie Brownstein

Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.

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

Writing isn't necessarily about what one knows but what one wants to know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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