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.

Kissing is kind of scary.

I'm a huge Quasi fan.

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.

With Sleater-Kinney, we have a lot of earnest fans, and we were an earnest band.

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.

I'd rather do spontaneous and silly work like ThunderAnt than have somebody's film on my shoulders.

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.

There's some horrible connotations in the word 'reunion.'

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.

I went to a liberal arts college wherein grading was qualitative and we had to write our own evaluations.

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.

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.

In the realm of fakery, I would choose 'Rock Band' over 'American Idol' or over any of the other flimsy truths masquerading as music.

When people grow up with a family characterized by chaos and uncertainty and fragility, you look for a substitution for that.

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.

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.

The process of coming out, as much as other people want to couch it in terms of politics, it's a very personal journey.

My sister's great. She's very bright; she's very private.

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

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.

Writing 'Monitor Mix' was a very edifying and inspiring few years.

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.

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.

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.'

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

I have really never aligned myself with hipsterdom or coolness.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Of course, 'Portlandia' is all about ways that people curate their physical space and their life.

There's something about mean-spiritedness that has a way of distancing an audience.

Sometimes when you look at somebody else's career or choices or family, there's almost a comfort in knowing there's another option.

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.

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.

Shoes are a great invention. They keep us from stepping on nails. Your feet stay clean and warm and dry.

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.

The Northwest, to make a generalization, is a fairly sensitive populace. Slightly self-conscious and very self-reflexive.

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 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 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.