Quotes from 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.

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.

People barely have anything to say in 140 characters. The last thing we need is a bunch of discursive rambling on Twitter.

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.

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.

When my father came out to his mom, my grandmother said, 'You waited for your father to die; why couldn't you have waited for me to die?' I knew then that I never want to contribute to the corrosiveness of wanting someone to stay hidden.

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.

I'm such a big fan of 'The Bachelor.'

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

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 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 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.

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

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.

My own relationship to food was healthy. I was lean and athletic with a high metabolism. I could eat half a pizza with a side of breadsticks and wash it down with soda. I never dieted or denied myself food.

When the band first started, it was so much about carving out some space for myself and our audience and our songs.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.