109+ Carrie Brownstein Quotes On Being, Fred Armisen And Corin Tucker

Carrie Brownstein is an American musician, singer, songwriter, actress, and director. She is best known as the guitarist and vocalist of the indie rock band Sleater-Kinney and for her role as a writer, actor, and director on the sketch comedy series Portlandia. Brownstein has also released two solo albums and published a memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, in 2015. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Carrie Brownstein on leadership, life, being.

Top 10 Carrie Brownstein Quotes

1. I love coffee. I love a midday espresso on set, just for the energy.
2. I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.
3. I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres.
4. I will say, as a woman, when you put a mustache on, you find out a lot of things about yourself.
5. I really don't know what to do when my life is not chaotic.
6. The game Rock Band has been haunting me like a bad ring tone. It gets stuck in my head and momentarily effaces all that I love about music.
7. You can never underestimate that moment of somebody explaining your life to you, something you thought was inexplicable, through music. That was the way out of loneliness.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music.

Carrie Brownstein Short Quotes

• People are wearing fleece, which is a hard fabric to be angry in.
• I'm all about being prudent. And I've started to appreciate experiences more than actual objects.
• I think proteins are really good for your brain. And your brain is where comedy comes from.
• I think you should be prepared for a green-screen CGI at all times.
• Just invest in apps. Just download apps and then pay yourself the dividend.
• If you always want to look relevant, just be CGI-prepared.
• These new bands sound like Gang of Four — if Gang of Four sucked.
• It turns out I'm not very good at working with a traditional boss.
• Rihanna has guts and she always seems to be singing from someplace honest, dark and fierce.
• I guess the role of art is to make something that is ambiguous and complex.

Carrie Brownstein Quotes About Life

I don't think I would live outside of the Northwest. I think the quality of life in Portland is really good. People move from intense, high-powered jobs, and move to Portland, work half as much and live twice as good. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein Quotes About Love

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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

I would love to do a reunion tour if it only involved basements across the U.S. — Carrie Brownstein

I have no problem spending money on a great meal with friends or a flight to see somebody that I love, versus something like a fancy car. I don't need a fancy car. I don't need a giant TV. — Carrie Brownstein

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

Carrie Brownstein Quotes About Music

As a kid, before I got into music, I did all the drama classes, went to theater camp in the summers, so it wasn't totally a foreign world. — Carrie Brownstein

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

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

I think one of the reasons I haven't been doing music is because I think that some of my performance, like, needs are being taken care of in other mediums. — Carrie Brownstein

It was writing about music for NPR - connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community - that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

I was always drawn to performing. I took improv and acting classes during the summers and was involved in middle and high school plays. But when I discovered indie and punk music in high school, those things sort of took over. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

I have no desire to play music unless I need music. — Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein Quotes About Feel

To be a fan is to be curious, and to be curious is to have openness... Part of being a fan is to allow 360 degrees of experience - to immerse without judgment. It's like a really fearless step forward into new experience. There's something that feels very timeless about fandom. — Carrie Brownstein

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

For film and television, it's interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifesting their affections are the correct ones. It's not just about being a fan, it's about how you perform your fandom. That's always been interesting to me. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

I like to take things incrementally, and strive for something that feels more attainable. — Carrie Brownstein

I feel like I came in comedy's side door, and still feel very fraudulent in many ways. — 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've never been in another kind of midlife crisis. I don't know what it feels like when you're through that, but I definitely feel that changing a few things, like being on a different label and having things kind of settle back into a sense of normality, helps to feel grounded. — Carrie Brownstein

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

Carrie Brownstein Quotes About Play

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

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

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. — Carrie Brownstein

After Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006 I had very little desire to play music. It took well over three years before picking up a guitar meant anything to me other than an exercise. — Carrie Brownstein

With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein Quotes About Ways

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

I'm always trying to encourage people not to limit themselves in the same way that many of our parents stayed with one job forever. — Carrie Brownstein

I like how blogging emulates fandom because it's so completist and spontaneous. It really mirrors the way people listen to music, and I like that fluidity with online content. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

To me, curiosity is married to optimism. And that's where a lot of my motivation comes from. A lot of my way out of depression and anxiety is that intersection between optimism and curiosity. Because it means taking a step forward with the hope that there will be discovery. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

The enemy of any artistic statement is to create something that no one cares about, in the sense they have no opinion either way. — Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein Famous Quotes And Sayings

I'm really drawn to the uncompromising realness of natural process: It's unadorned. It's not very pretty. — Carrie Brownstein

The fact that people go to Portland to visit a tiny feminist bookstore-no matter what the impetus is for them getting there-the fact that they go in there and look around and shop for books or stationery or whatever, is a major source of pride for me. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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

I think short-term goals are important. Trying to set a missive for yourself for the entire year can be daunting, and it can feel too easy to fail or fall short of that. — Carrie Brownstein

I think it's very disheartening and undermining to focus on nostalgia or youthful sentimentality as the lens through which you view art and culture, because then you feel like everything good already happened. I really just try to be in the present with music and just find the things that are invigorating and make me feel happy to be alive right now. — Carrie Brownstein

What I value most in new music today is strangeness, oddity. Passion. And humor. I listen to a lot of hip-hop because it combines so many things like that. — Carrie Brownstein

[I hate] the ways that people want their special needs to be met, whether it's their food allergies or their special lotions or shoes. Or the ways that people want their neighborhoods and restaurants curated in a way that's really tailored to them. Growing up with someone who was living by these very strict, repressive rules for themselves - it made me very allergic to the idea of denial. — Carrie Brownstein

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

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. — Carrie Brownstein

Even if, personally, I'm in a place of contentment or solidity, I feel like it's hard not to look out into American culture and see vast inequity, widespread institutionalized violence and racism and transphobia and environmental destruction. It's hard to be in this world and feel a sense of innate satisfaction at all. There's plenty of things to feel unsettled about. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

I don't want to mislead people. — Carrie Brownstein

I have to erase my Google search histories, because they always lead to an obituary. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

I'm interested in the crevices, and the grotesque, and the unsavory. That started out when I was young... I've never quite been able to shake that. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

To me, the grotesque is like a sonic manifestation of reality. I don't know how you could look out onto our world and see only beauty. And I like beautiful things. I like the aesthetically harmonious. But I am much more attracted to something that is off-kilter. It is a truer reflection of not only nature, but the human spirit - the state of the world. I just think everything feels a little off. — Carrie Brownstein

There was this kind of wackiness that was really embraced and put on a pedestal. It was before the millennium. We were envisioning a future that was mostly idealistic. I think that came crashing down a little bit in 9/11, or a lot. There is something about Portland that does seem to still exist in this total idealistic world and total idealistic mind frame, and I think that's what Dream of the '90s is talking about. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — 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

We brainstorm an idea and then we do flesh it out a little bit - we come up with a script, mostly to have beats and a sense of a story and a narrative arc. Often when we get into the space and onto the location, that changes and something we discover in the moment becomes the moment, becomes the story, becomes the character. — Carrie Brownstein

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

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. — Carrie Brownstein

I need a template of a template — Carrie Brownstein

I think, for some artists, the fear of taking on a political identity stems from not wanting to be pigeonholed as political actor or a political musician. It becomes this thing where somehow your art can no longer exist on its own and be multifaceted. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

It's so nice to have a band name you don't have to explain. — Carrie Brownstein

I'll admit that I'm not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast. — Carrie Brownstein

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

There are foods you should avoid. For me, sugar is a no. Because it gives me a spike and then a crash. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

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

You do have to live through things, and to live through things is to observe want, and to observe lacking. Even if the hunger is a curiosity. — Carrie Brownstein

I think closing-off is the most detrimental thing we can do as people. Also, the idea of not judging oneself. — Carrie Brownstein

I don't think I would live outside of the Northwest. I think the quality of life in Portland is really good. People move from intense, high-powered jobs, and move to Portland, work half as much and live twice as good. They can afford bigger houses, or they can actually afford to buy a house, they can work the minimal amount and still get by. I think there's a really strong sense of community there. It's beautiful. — Carrie Brownstein

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. — Carrie Brownstein

I'm kind of a hermit. it's almost easier for me to write about connection than to actually connect. — 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

"We can't name it, but we can sing along." That is my ultimate relationship to any art form, but especially music. — Carrie Brownstein

I've always been interested in queerness and underground and fringe and periphery, and who and what flourishes in those spaces. Those spaces that are darker and dingier and more dangerous, more lonely. What comes out of there, to me, is the life force. I'm excited when the center reaches over to those places and pulls inspiration from them, and translates it for a lot of people. — Carrie Brownstein

Life Lessons by Carrie Brownstein

1. Carrie Brownstein has shown that it is possible to pursue multiple creative endeavors at once and still be successful.
2. She is an example of how hard work, dedication, and perseverance can lead to success in any field.
3. Her work has also demonstrated the importance of staying true to oneself and one's own creative vision.