Quotes by Carrie Fisher

Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What's important is the action. You don't have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.

Going through challenging things can teach you a lot, and they also make you appreciate the times that aren't so challenging.

Over time, I've paid attention, taken notes and forgotten easily half of everything I've gone through.

She's an immensely powerful woman, and I just admire my mother very much.

I always kept a diary -- not a diary like, 'Dear Diary, we got up at 5 A.M., and I wore the weird hair again and that white dress! Hi-yeee!' I'd just write.

It creates community when you talk about private things.

It's difficult to know what to say to someone whose partner has cheated on them.

Even my parents sort of went along with the assumption that they were a good couple, but they probably weren't a very good couple.

My comfort wasn't the most important thing -- my getting through to the other side of difficult feelings was. However long it might seem to take, and however unfair it might seem, it was my job to do it.

I have been in 'Star Wars' since I was 20.

I was street-smart -- but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive.

I like birds and dogs. I'm allergic to cats.

If Harrison was unable to see that I had feelings for him (at least five, but sometimes as many as seven) then he wasn't as smart as I thought he was -- as I knew he was.

I don't do acid anymore, so I travel instead.

I had never been Princess Leia before and now I would be her forever. I would never not be Princess Leia. I had no idea how profoundly true that was and how long forever was.

My mother certainly loves caviar, but I think that's generational -- they grew up thinking it's romantic or sophisticated or something.

I've never met a deadline I couldn't miss. I make sure my editors know this.

Then I overdosed at 28, at which point I began to accept the bipolar diagnosis.

I was into pain reduction and mind expansion, but what I've ended up with is pain expansion and mind reduction.

Nobody wants to read about a good-looking happy person.

So Pat showed me a variety of exotic looks--from Russian princesses to Swedish maids. I looked at the images, slightly alarmed. There was no Lady Gaga to guide me.

In my opinion, a problem derails your life and an inconvenience is not being able to get a nice seat on the un-derailed train.

Eventually, life of the party is just like any other job. I've thought of myself that way at times, but it's sort of like holding everybody hostage. It diminishes everyone else. And ultimately, your friends don't require it of you.

The trouble with getting introspective when you're pregnant is that you never know who you might run into.

Guys are great before you know who they are,' said Lucy. 'They're great when you're still with who they might be.

I'm in denial in its lesser state. It will take me a second. People around me will notice my mania first. And, my depression.

Never love for me, only obsession. Someone has to stand still for you to love them. My choices are always on the run.

You can set up housekeeping on one side of the looking glass or the other -- the side that makes big things small or small things big.

The older you get, the easier it is to spot the phonies. And I just think, how unpleasant for them.

I guess high verbal skills are highest in my list of necessary qualifications for a man -- for anyone actually. I like to talk. And I don't necessarily move far, but I move fast.

I was sitting by myself the other night doing the usual things one does when spending time alone with yourselves. You know, making mountains out of molehills, hiking up to the top of the mountains, having a Hostess Twinkie and then throwing myself off the mountain. Stuff like that.

I feel like what I look like is government issue, it's pretty much out of my hands. But I invent the stuff I say. That's me.

The crew was mostly men. That's how it was and that's pretty much how it still is. It's a man's world and show business is a man's meal with women generously sprinkled through it like over-qualified spice.

I got the part in the Shampoo. But it was this very unpleasantly rivalry tug.

He doesn't move his face when he talks. His eyes are like shark eyes. Dead.

But, the thing is that when you are a survivor, which fine, I reluctantly agree that I am--and who over 40 isn't?--when you are a survivor, in order to be a really good one, you have to keep getting in trouble to show off your gift.

I was filmed against a blue screen in the Star Wars. All the rest came later, in Lucasland. They did have me take gun lessons, though. I went to the same guys who taught Robert De Niro for Taxi Driver.

I think I am Princess Leia and Princess Leia is me. It's like a Mobius Striptease.

There are women in makeup and hair and wardrobe, but not in camera, not in sound, you know, and not in special effects. It's all men.

As we all know, there is no underwear in space.

I always felt the Jewish part more. In fact, growing up I felt like a Jew among WASPs. My brother is more decidedly Waspy.

I guess I do carry a bit of male energy. It's like what I always say -- two yangs don't make a right.

It was a year that, like all years, a lot of things happened in.

The only thing worse than being hurt is everyone knowing that you're hurt.

I would rather not watch myself in movies. I enjoy the experience, but I won't really see the film until they're on cable deep on into my life so I can pretend it's someone else at another time.

My mother had an amazing life, and she's someone to admire.

Good anecdote -- bad reality.

My father just got out of the Betty Ford Clinic. He's in his 60s, and this was the first time he ever did anything like that.

Some of my memories will never return. They are lost -- along with the crippling feeling of defeat and hopelessness. Not a tremendous price to pay.

I must say I can appreciate it when males are very male. Like Harrison Ford, for instance. He's pretty butch. I guess I prefer butch to terribly fey.

I mean, most fun things are bad for you in one way or another.

Still, the word boyfriend starts to sound pathetic after age 30.

There are very few women from my mother's generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life and raised children and had horrible relationships and lost all her money and got it back again.

Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.

Sometimes I feel like I've got my nose pressed up against the window of a bakery, only I'm the bread.

You're only as sick as your secrets. Either it comes out their way or my way. I talk about myself behind my back. And I'm funny about it.

Until adolescence I thought I had the best mother in the world. Such a graceful mother. I had this fantasy that I was the wrong daughter.

My favorite one to see is the metal bikini on men.

I used to want to gamble, too, until I was 20 and could actually go to a casino. Then I wasn't so crazy about the attitude.

Finding the cutest guy in A.A. is like finding the cutest loony in the bin.

Here's what I've learned: that someone can change the course of history with a box cutter.

You know the bad thing about being a survivor... You keep having to get into difficult situations in order to show off your gift.

I love the idea of God, but it's not stylistically in keeping with the way I function. I would describe myself as an enthusiastic agnostic who would be happy to be shown that there is a God. I can see that people who believe in God are happier. ... But I doubt.

I was telling some people in my dressing room some of my other stories, my psychotic break, and blah, blah, blah, and no, they kind of look at you and it's just not what they wanted to hear.

My fear is that I will be crushed in an elevator and my mother will get hold of my journals from my adolescence.

I quote fictional characters, because I'm a fictional character myself!

I rarely cry. I save my feelings up inside me like I have something more specific in mind for them. I am waiting for the exact perfect situationand then BOOM! I'll explode in a light show of feeling and emotion -- a pinata stuffed with tender nuances and pent-up passions.

Part of my gestalt is that I still feel a little bit like a wallflower. Even in my own life. I talk about myself behind my back.

I feel so agitated all the time, like a hamster in search of a wheel.

Generally someone will eventually tell you that you have to do something to help yourself.

If my life wasn't funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.

I do believe you're only as sick as your secrets.

I can like men who are a little light in the loafers.

Waiting, done at really high speeds, will frequently look like something else.

Sex was for men. Marriage, like lifeboats, was for women and children.

The message about sex and relationships that she had gotten as a child... was confused, contradictory. Sex was for men, and marriage, like lifeboats, was for women and children.

You know how most illnesses have symptoms you can recognize? Like fever, upset stomach, chills, whatever.
Well, with manic depression, it's sexual promiscuity, excessive spending, and substance abuse -- and that just sounds like a fantastic weekend in Vegas to me!

If I'd known about all the masturbating I would generate--well, that would've been extraordinarily weird from many angles and I'm glad it didn't come up, as it were.

Mania starts off fun, not sleeping for days, keeping company with your brain, which has become a wonderful computer, showing 24 TV channels all about you. That goes horribly wrong after awhile.

My mom is a little bit eccentric. I mean, she does -- she has a lot of unique ideas. For example, she thought that I should have a child with her last husband, Richard, because it would have nice eyes.

You know how they say that religion is the opiate of the masses? Well I took masses of opiates religiously.

I did masses of opiates religiously.

What worries me is, what if this guy is really the one for me and I just haven't had enough therapy yet for me to be comfortable with having found him.

I heard someone say once that many of us only seem able to find heaven by backing away from hell. And while the place that I've arrived at in my life may not precisely be everyone's idea of heavenly, I could swear sometimes -- I hear angels sing.

I just have basically too much personality for one person, and not quite enough for two.

Oh! This'll impress you -- I'm actually in the Abnormal Psychology textbook. Obviously my family is so proud. Keep in mind though, I'm a PEZ dispenser and I'm in the abnormal Psychology textbook. Who says you can't have it all?

You're not famous until you're a Pez dispenser.

I always just looked really like someone who will someday be on prescription medication.

I still give my friends relationship advice, of course, and I'm not bad at it. 'Anyone's crisis but mine' is my motto.

If you're manic-depressive and you're functioning in this world and doing it all well, I think, wow, you should be proud of being able to say, this is what I'm getting through right now.

It's very good to get through them (drugs) while you're still young and then talk about how great or bad it was for the rest of your life.

Having waited my entire life to get an award for something, anything...I now get awards all the time for being mentally ill. It's better than being bad at being insane, right? How tragic would it be to be runner-up for Bipolar Woman of the Year?