If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that's unacceptable.
— Carrie Fisher
It can't hurt to go to the people you love, whose blood type courses through your veins and whose DNA, from a certain angle, contains many of the same markings as yours. You don't have to take their advice, but let them share their version of solutions to life's difficulties. Good or bad - it could be interesting.
Going to AA helped me to see that there were other people who had problems that had found a way to talk about them and find relief and humor through that.
If you claim something, you can own it.
All of us are looking for an outside ordeal that will internally change us.
I have been in 'Star Wars' since I was 20.
I fear dying. Anything with pain associated with it, I don't like.
I think I do overshare. It's my way of trying to understand myself.
She's an immensely powerful woman, and I just admire my mother very much.
What I've realized recently is that the difference between me and Mickey Mouse is, there's not a man that can go and say, 'Look, can you get me in any faster? I'm Mickey Mouse.' Whereas I can go in and say, 'Look, could you get me a table faster? I'm Princess Leia.'
I've seen pictures of myself with makeup on, and I look like those women who look like they're wearing makeup so they can look young, and I don't think that's good. They have all these products now called - wait, what's it called, it's my favorite - youth suppressant, or age go away; they don't work.
I watched my parents' fame diminish - as I was getting more conscious, their celebrity was going back down the mountain.
I have been in 'Star Wars' since I was 20. And they're not just doing some goofy sequel, like, to service the hunger of it. It actually has been thought out and it has integrity and they took it seriously, which they didn't have to do, you know? It's hard to do, given the appetite and the angles from which everybody's coming at it.
I have been Princess Leia exclusively. It's been a part of my life for 40 years.
I have a harder time eating properly than I do exercising. It's easier for me to add an activity than to deny myself something. And when I do lose the weight, I don't like that it makes me feel good about myself. It's not who I am.
My parents had this incredibly vital relationship with an audience, like muscle with blood. This was the main competition I had for my parents' attention: an audience.
I am truly a product of Hollywood in-breeding. When two celebrities mate, someone like me is the result.
Over time, I've paid attention, taken notes and forgotten easily half of everything I've gone through.
It's the most amazing thing to be able to forgive.
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.
People want me to say that I'm sick of playing Leia and that it ruined my life. If my life was that easy to ruin, it deserved to be ruined.
That's why 'Star Wars' is appealing. You watch someone fight the perilous monster.
I've totally embraced it. I like Princess Leia. I like how she was feisty.
I trust myself. I trust my instincts. I know what I'm gonna do, what I can do, what I can't do. I've been through a lot, and I could go through more, but I hope I don't have to. But if I did, I'd be able to do it. I'm not going to enjoy dying, but there's not much prep for that.
She has been more than a mother than me - not much, but definitely more... She's been an unsolicited stylist, interior decorator and marriage counselor... Admittedly, I found it difficult to share my mother with her adoring fans, who treated her like she was part of their family.
I overheard people saying, 'She thinks she's so great because she's Debbie Reynolds' daughter!' And I didn't like it; it made me different from other people, and I wanted to be the same.
I outlasted my problems.
Along with aging comes life experience, so in every way that is consistent with even being human, Leia has changed.
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.
I knew what show business was, which was why I didn't want in on that action. I saw what happens! You get it, and then you lose it.
I don't like looking at myself. I have such bad body dysmorphia.
I'm in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say 'Get younger,' because that's how easy it is.
In the Fifties, my parents were known as 'America's sweethearts'. Their pictures graced the covers of all the newspapers. They were the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston of their day.
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 waited for my daughter, Billie, to come to me with her troubles - but I'm glad I didn't hold my breath.
It's difficult to know what to say to someone whose partner has cheated on them.
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.
Movies are dreams! And they work on you subliminally.
You get to choose what monsters you want to slay. I'm sorry to say this again, but let's face it - the Force is with you.
I've been there for a couple of people when they were dying; it didn't look like fun. But if I was gonna do it, I'd want someone like me around. And I will be there!
It creates community when you talk about private things.
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.
What I wrote all the time when I was a kid - I don't want to call it 'poetry,' because it wasn't poetry. I was not that kind of a writer. I was a rhymer. I was a fan of Dorothy Parker's, so maybe I wrote poetry to that extent, but my main focus was the humor of it, and word construction, and the slant. Your words, it's a very powerful experience.
It really annoys me that I'm vain, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to discard that tendency.
You knew how humiliating that is as an experience for celebrities to be less of a celebrity. There's no class to adjust to being less famous, and you don't think you have to worry about it. But you do.
Writing is a very calming thing for me.
What I always wanna tell young people now: Pay attention. This isn't gonna happen again. Rather than try to understand it as it's going along, have it go along for a while and then understand it.
We treat beauty like an accomplishment, and that is insane. Everyone in L.A. says, 'Oh, you look good,' and you listen for them to say you've lost weight. It's never 'How are you?' or 'You seem happy!'
There were days I could barely struggle into a size 46 or 48, months of larges and XXLs, and endless rounds of leggings with the elastic at the waist stretched to its limit and beyond - topped with the fashion equivalent of a tea cozy. And always black, because I was in mourning for my slimmer self.
I was born on October 21, 1956 in Burbank, California. My father, Eddie Fisher, was a famous singer. My mother, Debbie Reynolds, was a movie star. Her best-known role was in 'Singin' In The Rain.'
