Carrie Brownstein

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

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

“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.”

“Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Rock Band is more like Stairmaster than it is like rock 'n' roll - it's the same steps with different degrees of difficulty.”

“Nostalgia is so certain: the sense of familiarity it instills makes us feel like we know ourselves, like we've lived. To get a sense that we have already journeyed through something - survived it, experienced it - is often so much easier and less messy than the task of currently living through something.”

“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 never wanted to feel ashamed for striving, for desiring, for ambition. And I never wanted to judge another woman, or anyone, for that matter, for their own aspirations, even if they differed from my own”

“I'm a huge Quasi fan.”

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

“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.”

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

“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 actually think that Republican administrations are better for music. The Reagan era was such a great era for punk and indie rock.”

“I love James Baldwin's autobiographical writing.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”