Carrie Fisher Quotes

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

Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously.

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.

I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.

Take your broken heart, make it into art.

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

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

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

I feel I'm very sane about how crazy I am.

I'll do whatever I have to do to protect you. I'll lie, cheat, and steal to make you okay. I'll share your suffering, and I'll carry you when you're weighed down. I'll never leave you, not even when you ask me to. Do you believe me?

Let me carry you out. I'll never let you touch the ground. I was made to carry you, Olivia. You're fucking heavy with all of your guilt and self-loathing. But, I can do it. Because I love you.

Do not let what you think they think of you make you stop and question everything you are.

Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.” “Maybe lifting someone else’s weight makes yours a little more bearable

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

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.

I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere.

Instant gratification takes too long.

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.

One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you're living with this illness and functioning at all, it's something to be proud of, not ashamed of. They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication.

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

It’s not nice being inside my head. It’s a nice place to visit but I don’t want to live in here. It’s too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls.

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

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

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

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

I don’t hate hardly ever, and when I love, I love for miles and miles. A love so big it should either be outlawed or it should have a capital and its own currency.

I need to write. It keeps me focused for long enough to complete thoughts. To let each train of thought run to its conclusion and let a new one begin. It keeps me thinking. I’m afraid that if I stop writing I’ll stop thinking and start feeling.

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?

I finally said it. The actual words, out loud, to her face. It was a relief, not carrying it around anymore, and it was a rush, actually telling her. I was in an elated sort of daze, on a high. She loved me. I didn’t need to hear her say it out loud, I knew it innately in the way she looked at me just then. Conrad Fisher

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.

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?

I act like someone in a bomb shelter trying to raise everyone’s spirits.

If anyone reads this when I have passed to the big bad beyond I shall be posthumorously embarrassed. I shall spend my entire afterlife blushing.

Someone has to stand still for you to love them. My choices are always on the run.

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’m a hick,” I recall saying to him. “No,” Harrison answered. “You think you’re less than you are. You’re a smart hick.” And then, “You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.

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.

I call people sometimes hoping not only that they’ll verify the fact that I’m alive but that they’ll also, however indirectly, convince me that being alive is an appropriate state for me to be in. Because sometimes I don’t think it’s such a bright idea. Is it worth the trouble it takes trying to live life so that someday you get something worthwhile out of it, instead of it almost always taking worthwhile things out of you?

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

I’m frightened of the power I have given him over me and of how he will almost certainly abuse it, merely by not being fully aware he has it.

I'm afraid that if I stop writing I'll stop thinking and start feeling.

I thought I would inaugurate a Bipolar Pride Day. You know, with floats and parades and stuff! On the floats we would get the depressives, and they wouldn’t even have to leave their beds - we’d just roll their beds out of their houses, and they could continue staring off miserably into space. And then for the manics, we’d have the manic marching band, with manics laughing and talking and shopping and fucking and making bad judgment calls.

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

It’s very dangerous to have someone like you, because one day he’ll find that you are not the person he thought you were.

You know what's funny about death? I mean other than absolutely nothing at all? You'd think we could remember finding out we weren't immortal. Sometimes I see children sobbing airports and I think, "Aww. They've just been told.

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 situation and then BOOM! I'll explode in a light show of feeling and emotion - a pinata stuffed with tender nuances and pent-up passions

And when you're young you want to fit in. Hell, I still want to fit in with certain humans, but as you get older you get a little more discriminating.

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.

Anyway, George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes one look at the dress and says, 'You can't wear a bra under that dress.' So, I say, 'Okay, I'll bite. Why?' And he says, 'Because... there's no underwear in space.' I promise you this is true, and he says it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn't see any bras or panties or briefs anywhere. Now, George came to my show when it was in Berkeley. He came backstage and explained why you can't wear your brassiere in other galaxies, and I have a sense you will be going to outer space very soon, so here's why you cannot wear your brassiere, per George. So, what happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn't- so you get strangled by your own bra. Now I think that this would make a fantastic obit- so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.

Nick was wrong about me. Having a mud vein didn’t kill me; it saved me. My vein drew Isaac. He was the light and he followed me into the darkness. He became the darkness, then he carried my burdens so I wouldn’t have to.

...about a year after that, I was invited to go to a mental hospital. And, you know, you don't want to be rude, so you go.

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.

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

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.

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?

The one I wore to kill Jabba (my favorite moment in my own personal film history), which I highly recommend your doing: find an equivalent of killing a giant space slug in your head and celebrate that.

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!

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

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned.

Because what can you do with people that like you, except, of course, inevitably disappoint them?

I've got to learn something from my mistakes instead of establishing a new record to break.

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

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

it’s important to be able to distinguish the difference between a problem and an inconvenience.

As Carrie Fisher once said in a film, everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humour.

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 & show business is a man's meal with women generously sprinkled through it like over-qualified spice.

I suspect that no matter what happens I will allow it to hurt me. Eat away at my insides, as it were—as it will be. As it always has been. Why am I so accessible? Why do I give myself to people who will always and should always remain strangers? I have always relied on the cruelty of strangers and I must stop it now.

Trying relentlessly to make you love me, but I don’t want the love—I quite prefer the quest for it. The challenge. I am always disappointed with someone who loves me—how perfect can he be if he can’t see through me?

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 not only feel better about myself because these people are also fucked up (and I guess this gives us a sense of community), but I feel better because look how much these fellow fuckups managed to accomplish!

no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.

Youth and beauty are not accomplishments.

Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.

I could charm the birds out of everyone's trees but his

...I thought you had to go to Iraq to get post traumatic stress disorder. And you do. But you can also just come on over to my house!

And not that it matters, but my mother is not a lesbian! She's just a really, really bad heterosexual.

I am always disappointed with someone who loves me - how perfect can he be if he can't see through me?

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

Good anecdote--bad reality.

I wish that I could leave myself alone. I wish that I could finally feel that I punished myself enough. That I deserved time off for all my bad behavior. Let myself off the hook, drag myself off the rack where I am both torturer and torturee.

What’s the riddle? Me talking so much And saying so little

Kidding yourself doesn’t require that you have a sense of humor. But a sense of humor comes in handy for almost everything else.

Vultures are difficult to charm unless you’re off somewhere rotting in the noonday sun. Casually rotting…a glib cadaver.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,

We often assume that when the surface offers so little the depth must be unfathomable.

I liked being Princess Leia. Or Princess Leia’s being me. Over time I thought that we’d melded into one. I don’t think you could think of Leia without my lurking in that thought somewhere.

There are two things that I know for certain guys are good for: pushing swings and killing insects.

i am someone who wants very much to be popular. I don’t just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you’ve ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong.

You're not really famous until youre a Pez dispenser.

I wish I could go away somewhere but the only problem with that is that I’d have to go, too.

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.

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 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.

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

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

To make him important in one’s life requires an overactive imagination. Unfortunately, mine never knows when to quit.

My life is like a lone, forgotten Q-Tip in the second-to-last drawer.

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.

Immediate gratification takes too long.

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.

But let's face it, the world of sex is weird no matter how you look at it. I mean-fourteen hours after you've had your face smashed into someone's genitals, you're walking down the street with the boy as though that were all "just fine, thank you, how are you!

I should let people I meet do the work of piecing me together until they can complete, or mostly complete, the puzzle. And when they’re finished they can look at the picture that they’ve managed to piece together and decide whether they like it or not. On their own time. Let them discover you.

And I ultimately not only addressed it, I named my two moods Roy and Pam. Roy is Rollicking Roy, the wild ride of a mood, and Pam is Sediment Pam, who stands on the shore and sobs. (Pam stands for “piss and moan.”) One mood is the meal, and the next mood is the check.

All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.

Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. They're the temporary happy byproducts of time and/or DNA. Don't hold your breath for either.

Anyway, at a certain point in my early twenties, my mother started to become worried about my obviously ever-increasing drug ingestion. So she ended up doing what any concerned parent would do. She called Cary Grant.

Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up into their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it.

I want someone to love and treasure and overwhelm.

What you'll have of me after I journey to that great Death Star in the sky is an extremely accomplished daughter, a few books, and a picture of a stern-looking girl wearing some kind of metal bikini lounging on a giant drooling squid, behind a newscaster informing you of the passing of Princess Leia after a long battle with her head.

Mom brought me some peanut butter cookies and a biography of Judy Garland. She told me she thought my problem was that I was too impatient, my fuse was too short, that I was only interested in instant gratification. I said, “Instant gratification takes too long.” The glib martyr.

That's the way it works in movies. Something happens that has an impact on someone's life, and based on that impact, his life shifts course. Well, that's not how it happens in life. Something has an impact on you, and then your life stays the same, and you think, 'Well, what about the impact?' You have epiphanies all the time. They just don't have any effect.

I highly recommend your doing: find an equivalent of killing a giant space slug in your head and celebrate that.

Never let 'em see you ache"; that's what Mr. Mayer always said. Or was it ass; "Never let 'em see your ass"?

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.

Thanks for the good times. Thank you for being so generous with what you have withheld. Thank you for being the snake in my grass, the thorn in my side, the pain in my ass, the knife in my back, the wrench in my works, the fly in my ointment. My Achilles’ heart. Caught in a whirlpool without an anchor, relaxing into it, calmly going under for one of many last times.

I do not want to take part in my life. It can just go on without me; I’m not giving it any help. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to talk to it, I don’t want it anywhere near me. It takes too much energy. I refuse to be a part of it. If you have a life, even if you get used to it ruining your sleep, spoiling your fun, requiring your somewhat undivided attention, what overwhelming relief one must feel when it finally skips town.

Years ago, there were tribes that roamed the earth, and every tribe had a magic person. Well, now, as you know, all the tribes have dispersed, but every so often you meet a magic person, and every so often, you meet someone from your tribe.

We lie buried together during the night and haunt each other by day.

I said, “Instant gratification takes too long.” The glib martyr.

Unfortunately, it hurts all three of my feelings.

...one of those unfortunate women who did not find nice men interesting. She found undesirables desirable. She sought out unpleasant boyfriends, then complained about them as though the government had allocated them to her.

The hairstyle that was chosen would impact how everyone—every filmgoing human—would envision me for the rest of my life. (And probably even beyond—it’s hard to imagine any TV obituary not using a photo of that cute little round-faced girl with goofy buns on either side of her inexperienced head.)

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

I’m sorry it’s not Mark—it could’ve been. It should’ve been. It might’ve meant something. Maybe not much, but certainly more.

I don’t want to make anyone else look stupid. That’s a privilege I reserve for myself.

I thought you might supply some tenderness I lacked But out of all the things I offered you took my breath away and now I want it back

Carrie Fisher. “Stay afraid, but do it anyway.

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.

My panic is rising again. My sense of isolation and worthlessness. And no other senses worth mentioning apparently. It's not nice being inside my head. It's a nice place to visit but I don't want to live here. It's too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I'm tired of it. That same old person, day in and day out. I'd like to try something else. I tried to neaten my mind, file everything away into tidy little thoughts, but it only got more and more cluttered. My mind has a mind of its own. I try to define my limits by seeing just how far I can go, and I find that I passed them weeks ago. And I've got to find my way back.

Now this is a delusion, but it’s my delusion and I’m sticking with it. It’s sort of like: I have problems but problems don’t have me.

I can't forget that stupid, fucking hologram speech. THAT'S why I did dope.

It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.

Do you or do you not like wearing earrings in your mouth that will one day smell like your ex-boyfriend's dick?

Never let 'em see you ache. That's what Mr. Mayer used to say. Or was it ass? Never let 'em see your ass.

I’ve washed that man right into my hair He’s sat in my chair and slept in my bed He’s eaten all my porridge and climbed inside my head

If wishes were horses mine would be glue -

What was it I wanted to tell you? Was it the new T-shirt-ready saying I came up with: “There’s no room for demons when you’re self-possessed”?

Offstage, I couldn't put things into words, and that was the one thing I'd always been able to rely on. Putting my feelings into words and praying they wouldn't be able to get out again.

The thing about having it all is, it should include having the ability to have it all. Maybe there are some people who know how to have it all. They're probably off in a group somewhere, laughing at those of us who have it all but don't know how to.

Let’'s say something happens, and from a certain slant maybe it'’s tragic, even a little bit shocking. Then time passes and you go to the funny slant, and now that very same thing can no longer do you any harm.

I tell my younger friends that one day they’ll be at a bar playing pool and they’ll look up at the television set and there will be a picture of Princess Leia with two dates underneath, and they’ll say, “Awww—she said that would happen.” And then they’ll go back to playing pool.

I didn’t realize I actually had post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, but why would I think I had that? Anyway, how would I know which was post-traumatic stress, which is addiction, which is bipolar, which is Libra?

The only one who didn't know was George Lucas. We kept it from him, because we wanted to see what his face looked like when it changed expression--and he fooled us even then. He got Industrial Light and Magic to change his facial expressions for him and THX sound to make the noise of a face-changing expression.

People adapt to you. Don't worry, you can't alter what they think of you to any great degree, and by the same token what they think of you can't alter you.

Not that writing on my notepads managed to actually empty my mind - though some would argue - but I was grateful to relieve the overflow.

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 may not take cristicism well, but that doesn't mean I'm not hearing it. I'll hear it later. Right now I'm storing it in my delayed response area, because it's hard for me. I wish I was someone who welcomed cristicism and immediately understood its valeu, but I'm not, and if I look unhappy about this, I am.

Take your broken heart, make it into art. —CARRIE FISHER • Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. —HELEN KELLER

Life carried on, but all of a sudden it wasn’t the same. There was a change in me. I couldn’t put my finger on it but somewhere in my brain a new door had appeared and despite my hardest efforts to keep it closed, my thoughts kept going there, wandering around in the empty room...

Mike Nichols used to say we were two flowers, no gardener. No one was minding the relationship.

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

And as much as I may have joked about Star Wars over the years, I liked that I was in those films. Particularly as the only girl in an all-boy fantasy.

Stop playing the part of the glib martyr. You’re just trying to make cyanide out of 7-Up.

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

Sometimes I'm afraid I'm happy, but because I expect it to be something else, I question the experience. So now, when in doubt," she shrugged with true bravado, "I'll assume I'm happy.

No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. It’s a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine.

If my life wasn't funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable. What that really means, other than what it sounds like, is, let's say something happens and from a certain slant maybe it's tragic, even a little bit shocking. Then time passes and you go to the funny slant, and now that very same thing can no longer do you any harm.

BOTH HANDS, ONE HEART, TWO MOODS, AND A HEAD

I suspect that no matter what happens I will allow it to hurt me. Eat away at my insides, as it were—as it will be. As it always has been.

He’s far from a fool, nowhere near. I’m quite near. I can feel the fool that’s so far away from him breathing down my neck.

And my daughter laughs and laughs and laughs, and I say, “Baby, the fact that you know that’s funny is going to save your whole life.” Now,

Heaven's no place for one who thrives on hell.

You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.

Tell the truth, be kind, all that corny stuff.

I had to comport myself with something approaching dignity, at twenty.

I narrate a life I'm reluctant to live.

I am closer to who I want to be when I am alone lately. With people, I hear my voice and I just wonder who or what I’m doing all this for. Spreading myself out in front of people. Devaluing my ostensible worth by being so readily available to almost any random pedestrian who wanders into the crosswalk of my focus. If someone is within an earshot I shoot off at the mouth.

I confide in everyone. I have no restricted private self, reserved specifically for certain trusted special people. I trust and mistrust anyone. I have traveled a full circle. But this time, on returning to zero again, I am able to act out the mistake more adeptly. I am on my way to becoming a very skilled loser. A specialist, a loser to end all losers. A flair for failing. I do it with style and finesse.

You love them until they can’t feel loved anymore, then you keep on loving them as if they were still there—as if there’s been a reprieve at the last moment and fate has reversed itself. It

Remember what it was like when you’d be getting ready to jump rope... two people were turning it, and you were waiting for exactly the right moment to jump in? I feel like that all the time.

Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit. but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you're manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I'm surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I've taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I'd share with you. So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you're mentally disordered 1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable? 2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight? 3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people? 4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to? 5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued? 6. Do you think about sex a lot? If you don't say yes to any of these questions either you're lying, or you don't speak English, or you're illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.

It’s not true, and the people who say it is are gaslighting you. The truth is you learned helplessness from experiences of being helpless. We unlearn helplessness by doing a thing—a thing that uses our body. Go for a walk. Scream into a pillow. Or, as Carrie Fisher put it, “Take your broken heart, make it into art.” Reverse the effects of helplessness by creating a context where you can do a thing.

I don't think you ever get to relax. I mean, sure there's a couple of people who could, but I bet they don't. Because by the time they get to where they could relax, they don't. Because by the time they get to where they could relax, they've gotten completely used to not being able to. How do you just suddenly become somebody who relaxes? The kind of ambition you need to get to that place is not relaxing. It's searing. I think there's probably something about living your whole life in a popularity contest -- trying to get people to like you who you couldn't give a flying fuck about -- that kills relaxation.

Back then I was always looking ahead to who I wanted to be versus who I didn’t realize I already was, and the wished-for me was most likely based on who other people seemed to be and the desire to have the same effect on others that they had had on me.

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

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

So it’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it.

Imagine having a mood system that functions essentially like weather—independently of whatever’s going on in your life.

Sometimes I wonder if we're all a little like Harold (a rooster). Real life carries on around us while we strut around in our own yards, thinking we're the ones in charge of things.

Don’t offer me love I seek disinterest and denial Tenderness makes my skin crawl Understanding is vile When you offer me happiness You offer too much My ideal is a long-lasting longing For someone whom I cannot quite touch

I was something women and men could agree on. They didn’t like me in the same way, but they liked me with the same intensity, and were all fine with the other sex liking me, too. Isn’t that weird? Think about it. And then stop and ponder something actually important. •

So maybe this was another example of nothing ever being just one thing. 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.

Sometimes she’d just walk around the city alone. Watch the people, smell the food, the bus exhaust, the smoke coming up through the grating. She’d feel protected somehow, found a sense of belonging in the hectic sprawl. And the next minute she’d feel like the one who couldn’t break the code, hit the right stride, catch the wave. Potholes and traffic and bums, oh my. With all the honking and the hum of movement, the living, breathing blur of noise gently pressing in on her, the great purr of the Metropolitan Cat turning into a dull roar. She’d feel so silent on the inside, her head as quiet as a stretch of sand, a cathedral silently worshipping the life that was all around her, storing it up for later when she needed some 'too much' to draw upon.

You see, even after decades of therapy and workshops and retreats and twelve-steps and meditation and even experiencing a very weird session of rebirthings, even after rappeling down mountains and walking over hot coals and jumping out of airplanes and watching elephant races and climbing the Great Wall of China, and even after floating down the Amazon and taking ayahuasca with an ex-husband and a witch doctor and speaking in tongues and fasting (both nutritional and verbal), I remained pelted and plagued by feelings of uncertainty and despair. Yes, even after sleeping with a senator, and waking up next to a dead friend, and celebrating Michael Jackson’s last Christmas with him and his kids, I still did not feel—how shall I put this?—mentally sound.

I hate that nothing can be done about the suffering of children, and that most of the world blocks out their suffering to cope with their own inability to help. The few who carry the burden, like social workers and teachers, become weary, burning out after only a few short years, forced to carry the weight that should be shared by a society. Children are vastly overlooked. Their importance underestimated by their size.

The idea that the world we experience is a solipsistic delusion projected from the interior of our mind consoles rather than disturbs us, since it conforms with our infantile fantasies of omnipotence; but the thought that our so-called interiority owe its existence to a fictionalized consensus will always carry an uncanny charge.

Well, naturally, my father flew to Elizabeth's side, gradually making his way slowly to her front. He first dried her eyes with his handkerchief, then he consoled her with flowers, and he ultimately consoled her with his penis. Now this made marriage to my mother awkward, so he was gone within the week.

who do I think I would’ve been if I hadn’t been Princess Leia? Am I Princess Leia, or is she me? Split the difference and you’d be closer to the truth. Star Wars was and is my job. It can’t fire me and I’ll never be able to quit, and why would I want to? (That’s

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. So I loved him and he allowed it. That’s as close a reckoning as I can muster four decades later.

My want can only do so much in terms of changing what's actually occuring with other people, and I'd like to keep it that way. I don't want to feel that if I had wanted something more, or had said one other thing, or had worn a different dress, or had been more mysterious, or more open, then I would get something or someone I wouldn't get otherwise.

It’s very dangerous to have someone like you, because one day he’ll find that you are not the person he thought you were. He’ll end up someday having only one thing in common with you and that’ll be a shared sense of contempt and disgust for you. Of course you knew all along how foolish and worthless you were, you just hoped that if you crouched down behind yourself enough he wouldn’t see it. But one day when your guard is off-duty you see him see. You both catch you at yourself. Catch you behaving. And then you’re lost. No. You were lost all along.

I told him about the Oedipal thing, about my father leaving when I was very young so I knew how to pine for men, but not how to love them. So he said, 'You'd probably would have been perfect for somebody in World War Two. You'd meet him and then he would get shipped overseas.' And I said, 'Maybe on our date I could drop you off and you could enlist,' and he said he would just got out and rent a uniform. So he was very funny.

George says that if you look at the person someone chooses to have "a relationship" with, you'll see what they think of themselves. So Harrison is what I think of myself. It's hardly a relationship, but nevertheless he is a choice. I examined all the options and chose the most likely to leave. No emotional investments. 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 I saw yet another Leia figurine recently at one of those comic book conventions—which yes, I go to when I’m lonely. Anyway, this doll was on a turnstile. And when it got to a particular place on the turnstile, you could see up my dress, to my anatomically correct—though shaved—galaxy snatch. Well, as you can imagine, because this probably happens to you all the time, I was a bit taken aback by this, so I called George and I said, “You know what, man? Owning my likeness does not include owning my lagoon of mystery.

it was also around then that I became uncontrollably enamored of a makeup enhancement that shames me even today: lip gloss. I had so much lip gloss on you might have slid off and broken your own lips if you tried to kiss me. I’ve never really understood what lip gloss is meant to enhance. Is that how much spit I leave on there when I lick my lips? Even if I was licking my lips in some come-hither way, that still wouldn’t account for that slap of sticky shine.

I mean, clearly no one would vote for volts until everything else had failed. It’s reserved for those languishing in the suicidal ideation lounge, and I had never been truly suicidal. Not that I haven’t, on occasion, thought it might be an improvement over the all-too-painful present if I could be deadish for maybe just a teeny little bit of it. You know, like a really good sleep, after which I’d wake refreshed and equal to whatever the problem had been, that problem would have now vanished.

It was one movie. It wasn’t supposed to do what it did—nothing was supposed to do that. Nothing ever had. Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up into their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it. Had

Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don't you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don't help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish--foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who "don't care what people think." You're not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character.

I do not want to take part in my life. It can just go on without me; I’m not giving it any help. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to talk to it, I don’t want it anywhere near me. It takes too much energy. I refuse to be a part of it. If you have a life, even if you get used to it ruining your sleep, spoiling your fun, requiring your somewhat undivided attention, what overwhelming relief one must feel when it finally skips town. I don’t like having to keep the spinning plates spinning on top of all their various and sun-dried poles. From now on they can fall off the poles and break for all I care. I censor myself and where the fuck does it get you? Gussying up your thoughts and putting them to paper.

One can never call me a quitter I take something right and see it through till it’s wrong Auctioning myself off to the lowest bidder Going once, going twice Gone Sold to the man for the price of disdain Some are sold for a song I don’t rate a refrain I guess it was all going just a little too well If I wasn’t careful I’d be happy pretty soon Heaven’s no place for one who thrives on hell, One who prefers the bit to the silver spoon. Then just when I’d almost resigned myself to winning When it seemed my bright future would never dim When my luck looked as though it was only beginning I met him. Sullen and scornful; a real Marlboro man The type who pours out the beer and eats the can A tall guy with a cultivated leer One you can count on to diaprove or disappear I knew right away that he was a find Given this, he was the kindest man I’d ever met Back came my sense of worthlessness And my long lost pangs of regret I was my old self again, lost and confused Reunited with that old feeling Of being misunderstood and misused. Sold to the man for the price of disdain All of this would be interesting If it weren’t so mundane