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
Shoes are a great invention. They keep us from stepping on nails. Your feet stay clean and warm and dry.
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.
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.
Of course, 'Portlandia' is all about ways that people curate their physical space and their life.
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.
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.
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.
I willed myself into being.
When it comes to music, we should be hoping for as outlandish a Republican candidate as we can get.
I loved 'Just Kids' by Patti Smith.
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.
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.
To me, it's exciting that women are dominating the pop charts.
I want to have a sense of openness and optimism, even if that means being open to things that are potentially dark.
I'm such a big fan of 'The Bachelor.'
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.
The Northwest, to make a generalization, is a fairly sensitive populace. Slightly self-conscious and very self-reflexive.
I think that there is something about the ritual of making things more difficult that people find meaning in.
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.
Sometimes when you look at somebody else's career or choices or family, there's almost a comfort in knowing there's another option.
With sociolinguistics, after covering the basics of the field, I focused on discourse analysis.
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.
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.
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.
People barely have anything to say in 140 characters. The last thing we need is a bunch of discursive rambling on Twitter.
I actually think that Republican administrations are better for music. The Reagan era was such a great era for punk and indie rock.
I love Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore: such great short-story writers.
I feel like I live a pretty quiet life. I like to focus on work and friends, and I love being in nature.
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.
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.
Curiosity is what keeps me open to a sense of hope. It staves off negativity.
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.'
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.'
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.'
Writing isn't necessarily about what one knows but what one wants to know.
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.
There's something about mean-spiritedness that has a way of distancing an audience.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like playing someone with a certain stability at the periphery of the madness.
I love James Baldwin's autobiographical writing.
So much of my intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw my way out of it.
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.
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.
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.
I have really never aligned myself with hipsterdom or coolness.
The value of kitsch exists in its novelty and in its connotations to more legitimate counterparts.
