Carrie Brownstein Quotes

I represent a kind of underground, punk side of drag.

I don't really give a f**k about the mainstream. The mainstream doesn't offer me anything. Why would I offer it anything? I love the world I have. I love the sort of subculture that Green Day represents.

The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.

I don't think I'm mainstream. I think what I am is lots and lots of different cults. And when you get lots and lots of small groups who like you a lot, they add up to a big group without ever actually becoming mainstream.

Drag wasn't always counterculture.

Yes, well, you are quite camp, so I guess that he could see the point of you.

I have this side of me that is a very European flamboyant; I won't say queenie, but it's borderline - could be perceived as homosexual.

You gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.

My parents were hippies. They met at an ashram, where they were studying how to be enlightened.

Where I come from, if you weren't a drag queen or a radical thinker or a performance artist of some kind, you were the weirdo.

L.A. is kind of flat these days; I guess Austin and other places are like that now. But that's what I wanted to get across: You could be as crazy as you wanted, and that was OK. You didn't have to be good; people would still come and hear you.

There will always be an underground.

The Internet, to me, is about rebel culture, and I've always loved it. When I think of rebel culture, I think of rock-and-roll or hip-hop, and for a long time now, it's been the Internet.

Drag will always find a way to be weird.

I get a real thrill for being 'overtly queer' in my aesthetic.

I think, from the beginning, I was healed and inspired by queer culture, and Christine and the Queens, as an idea from the beginning, is queer because it questions the norm.

Drag resists conservatism in the most basic way possible, and also in the most effective way possible, because it's improper when it comes to looks, which is everything in conservative systems.

Not all drag queens but certainly the ones who empowered me, are people who pushed buttons, and poked fun at society from Leigh Bowery, to Lady Bunny and Divine.

My attraction to the Church of Satan... is the same thing that initially attracted me to punk rock. It was something that wasn't very entirely popular, and it was sort of like the adversary to mainstream culture and beliefs.

I think there's a whole group of kids out there that don't relate to the glitz and glamour of hanging out in clubs and partying all the time. So I think some people are just more real than that, and I think our fans are those kind of kids that need something to relate to, and I think we're the band to do it.

I don't think drag will ever be mainstream because it's counter to what the mainstream directive is, which is picking an identity and sticking with it for the rest of your life.

As gay people, we always think outside of the box. The irreverent is always important to a drag queen and anyone else who lives outside the box. And this is why drag's important: remember to not take life seriously. It's always important to see the laughter in the illusion that we pretend is real.

I prefer to be subcultural rather than mass-cultural. I'm not interested in hitting the vein of the mainstream.

The ’60s was the last time when large groups of people in the West searched for alternative modes of being. In a society like India’s, which is still not fully modern or totally organized, and has a great deal of tolerance for otherness in general, they find the cultural license to try other things, to be whatever they want to be.

He doesn’t pretend,” the punk pixie said. He nodded toward Doyle. “Nice rings. You got anything else pierced?” “Yes,” Doyle said. The boy smiled, making the rings in the edge of his nose and his bottom lip curl cheerfully with it. “Me too,” he said.