Carrie fisher quotes

Drugs made me feel more normal.

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

I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting, I would rather watch TV. Of course this becomes eventually known to the other person.

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Meg Ryan was nice [ in When Harry Met Sally] ... the writing was good ... but it was really kind of a boy's club, I mean, there was Bruno Kirby, Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal - talk about your testosterone trio!

Mothers are great. They outlast everything. But when they're bad, they're the worst thing that can happen.

Celebrity is just obscurity biding its time.

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

I think of my body as a side effect of my mind. Like a thought I had once that manifested itself-- Oops! Oh no! Manifested. Look at this. Now we have to buy clothes and everything.

Actors may know how to act, but a lot of them don't know how to behave.

I don't like my face. I don't like to look at it.

I don't want to be caught ... ashamed of anything. And because generally someone who has bipolar doesn't have just bipolar, they have bipolar, and they have a life and a job and a kid and a hat and parents, so its not your overriding identity, it's just something that you have, but not the only thing - even if it's quite a big thing.

One of the great things to pretend is that you're not only alright, you're in great shape. Now to have that come true - I've actually gone on stage depressed and that's worked its magic on me, 'cause if I can convince you that I'm alright, then maybe I can convince me.

I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I'm still surviving it, but bring it on. Better me than you.

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.

I always wrote. I wrote from when I was 12. That was therapeutic for me in those days. I wrote things to get them out of feeling them, and onto paper. So writing in a way saved me, kept me company. I did the traditional thing with falling in love with words, reading books and underlining lines I liked and words I didn't know.

I'm fine, but I'm bipolar. I'm on seven medications, and I take medication three times a day. This constantly puts me in touch with the illness I have. I'm never quite allowed to be free of that for a day. It's like being a diabetic.

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 don't know about understood. I think that unless you are forced to understand - unless it is an issue of yours - you wouldn't bother to.

I think that now most people know someone in their family that is coping with something, but there is still a tremendous amount of shame - that one is still regarded as a defective unit ... if only they would pull up their bootstraps - they are only indulging their emotions, everybody's moody, blah, blah, blah.

I rarely think about my childhood. It's a slippery thing I can't keep hold of for long - it slithers out of my grasp. And a lot of the time I remember what was missing instead of what was there. I am a chronicler of absence.

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

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

I guess I could Debra Winger in any number of things. She's so luminous - it's a birth defect.

Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.

If you look at the person that someone chooses to have a relationship with, you'll see what they think of themselves.

I went to a doctor and told him I felt normal on acid, that I was a light bulb in a world of moths. That is what the manic state is like.

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.

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

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

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?

Saying you're an alcoholic and an addict is like saying you're from Los Angeles and from California.

My extroversion is a way of managing my introversion.

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

He's a very strange guy, my father. I can't get mad at him because he's so adorable.

There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed.

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

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.

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

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

A story a friend told me about being in New York and meeting this Latin-lover kind of guy. They went up to her hotel room, and the guy kind of pounced on her and told her to spread her legs, shouting, "Surrender the pink! Surrender the pink!" That's where it's from.

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

What doesn't kill men makes them stronger. What doesn't kill women makes men breakfast.

Bipolar disorder can be a great teacher. It's a challenge, but it can set you up to be able to do almost anything else in your life.

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!

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

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

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?

My heart's in the right place. I know, 'cuz I hid it there.

Me being an actor was an accident, and not something I wanted to do, because I knew what happened eventually. Yeah, maybe you'd get famous, but then you wouldn't be famous anymore. Then you'd have to scramble to get back to where you were, and chances are, you wouldn't.

All I can say is that when millions of plastic dolls of you are being sold each day and an equal number of teenage boys are masturbating over you each night, it's bound to do something screwy to your psyche.

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

Sid said that drugs weren't the problem, life was the problem. Drugs were the solution.

I think I do overshare, and I sometimes marvel that I do it. But it's sort of - in a way, it's my way of trying to understand myself.

I have a chemical imbalance that, in its most extreme state, will lead me to a mental hospital.

I did Google myself recentle - without lubricant. I don't recommend it.

Sometimes I think all I want to find is a mean guy and make him be nice to me. Or maybe a nice guy who's a little bit mean to me. But they're usually too nice too soon or too mean too long.

We live in America,' he said. 'Everyone who speaks English understands you. How they interpret you is something else.

It's hard to date once you're a big Star Wars star because you don't want to give people the ability to say, "I had sex with Princess Leia."

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

I'm fond of kissing. It's part of my job. God sent me down to kiss a lot of people.

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

I found out when I did the Oprah Winfrey show that there was a cookie jar of me. So she gave it to me. I had no idea prior to that that it even existed.

I'm very sane about how crazy I am.

I have two moods. One is Roy, rollicking Roy, the wild ride of a mood. And Pam, sediment Pam, who stands on the shore and sobs... Sometimes the tide is in, sometimes it's out.

I always think of Meryl [Streep] for everything now. There really aren't many actresses around who are truly lucid the way she is.

Meryl [Streep] plays the me-ish character. I love Meryl. She's totally wonderful.

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 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.

My mom had the breakdown for the family, and I went into therapy for all of us.

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

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 think that the truth is a really stern taskmistress.

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

It creates community when you talk about private things and you can find other people that have the same things. Otherwise, I don't know, I felt very lonely with some of the issues that I had or history that I had. And when I shared about it, I found that others had it, too.

For Star Wars, they had me tape down my breasts because there are no breasts in space. I have some. I have two.

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

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.

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

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

I spent a year in a 12-step program, really committed, because I could not believe what had happened - that I might have killed myself.

There is no point at which you can say, "Well, I'm successful now. I might as well take a nap."

No motive is pure. No one is good or bad-but a hearty mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away.

The world of manic depression is a world of bad judgment calls.

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

Happy is one of the many things I'm likely to be over the course of a day and certainly over the course of a lifetime. But I think if you have the expectation that you're going to be happy throughout your life--more to the point, if you have a need to be comfortable all the time--well, among other things, you have the makings of a classic drug addict or alcoholic.

I don't think Christmas is necessarily about things. It's about being good to one another, it's about the Christian ethic, it's about kindness.

I've never been that uncomfortable talking about it. Things come out [in the media] about me. When it's out, it's someone else's version of what's the matter with me. I want it to be my version of what it is. My recourse is to do my version.

I have tons of stuff that, you know, seems like it's a well-constructed sentence but it is not how people talk, it's how people write. So that's why I think it's sometimes easier for me to write for actors 'cause I know what's frustrating about, you know, sentences that come out just perfect. Well, who talks like that? And who of us don't overlap each other? Except on the radio, hopefully.

I don't want to be thought of as a survivor because you have to continue getting involved in difficult situations to show off that particular gift, and I'm not interested in doing that anymore.

I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there's something very satisfying about putting it into words. Certainly it's not something that you're in charge of, necessarily, but writing about it, putting it into your words, can be a very powerful experience.

A lot of the time, I'm just smart enough to be unhappy.

I will usually be in denial about that, too, because I really don't like that. Sometimes I will recognize it and sometimes someone will say, "are you okay?" And then you think, "Oh, maybe I'm not."

Here's how men think. Sex, work - and those are reversible, depending on age - sex, work, food, sports and lastly, begrudgingly, relationships. And here's how women think. Relationships, relationships, relationships, work, sex, shopping, weight, food.

I get lots of awards for being mentally ill. Apparently, I am better at being mentally ill than almost anything else I've ever done. Seriously - I have a shelf of awards for being bipolar.

Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.

It creates community when you talk about private things and you can find other people that have the same things.

Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.

I mean, that's at least in part why I ingested chemical waste - it was a kind of desire to abbreviate myself. To present the CliffNotes of the emotional me, as opposed to the twelve-column read.

I used to refer to my drug use as putting the monster in the box. I wanted to be less, so I took more - simple as that. Anyway, I eventually decided that the reason Dr. Stone had told me I was hypomanic was that he wanted to put me on medication instead of actually treating me. So I did the only rational thing I could do in the face of such as insult - I stopped talking to Stone, flew back to New York, and married Paul Simon a week later.

You know how I always seem to be struggling, even when the situation doesn't call for it?

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

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.

I'd like to wear my old [cinnamon buns] hairstyle again - but with white hair. I think that would be funny.

My favorite films are ones that have my lines in it, and I like those lines. And I like to hear them.

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.

I've often said to myself, "Thank God I can write, 'cause this is hilarious." I actually wanted to go into all that more in the book, but my editor thought it was too crazy.

Actually,I am a failed anorexic. I have anorexic thinking, but I can't seem to muster the behavoir

Look,' he said, 'I don't think we should continue this discussion. I don't like this side of you.' 'I'm not a box,' she said 'I don't have sides. This is it. One side fits all. This is it.

Your innermost urges will tell you what strategy to employ to accomplish your special purpose while doing the work you enjoy.

Instant gratification takes too long.

No, as it turns out, I really like being congratulated on my weight loss. I like it so much, it's tragic.

I think of my body as a side effect of my mind.

I like the community of acting better than the prison of writing. I like sets.

From here on out, there's just reality. I think that's what maturity is: a stoic response to endless reality. But then, what do I know?

Leia follows me like a vague smell.

I've got to stop getting obsessed with human beings and fall in love with a chair. Chairs have everything human beings have to offer, and less, which is obviously what I need. Less emotional feedback, less warmth, less approval, less patience and less response. The less the merrier. Chairs it is. I must furnish my heart with feelings for furniture.

I'll never be known for my work with boundaries.

Don't you see? We've become smart enough to justify stupid behavior. Like, 'I'm angry at him and I didn't express it, so I turned my anger inward and now it's depression, so in order to feel good again, what I should do is call him and express my anger.' It's like, if we can make it sound smart enough, we're allowed to do stupid things.

As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't.

My inner world seems largely to consist of three rotating emotions: embarrassment, rage, and tension. Sometimes I feel excited, but I think that's just positive tension.

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

I was born imagining myself with an apron on, with pies cooling on the window sill and babies crying upstairs. I thought that all that stuff would somehow anchor me to the planet, that it was the weight I needed to keep from just flying off into space.

A lot of times, people think they're the only ones that feel a certain way.