Five years ago this month, we lost one of the greatest creatives to ever grace the silver screen. Actress, writer, and advocate Carrie Fisher, best known for her performance as the bold, intelligent, and morally-grounded Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars film franchise, was a hero to so many—an outspoken, brilliant, and, quite frankly, hilarious film icon who stood out from the Hollywood crowd.
As the tribute card following 2018’s The Last Jedi attested, Carrie Fisher will always be “Our Princess.” The fearlessness, heart, humor, and spirit she brought to Princess Leia Organa in the Skywalker Saga inspired countless young women (myself included) to lead with tenacity and love and to rebel against oppressive structures. Fisher brought a warmth to Leia that became the backbone of the character: a royal-turned-general who had lost everything and yet never abandoned her hope for the future.
Though Leia Organa is a fictional character, there was much more still to admire about the artist who portrayed her. Like Organa, Fisher was an unapologetic, whip-smart iconoclast, revolutionary in her defiance of society's rigid rules and demands. But dig in a bit further into her staggering memoirs, interviews, and advocacy work, and you'll find a kind of tender fragility that transcends comparison. One of the reasons Fisher meant so much to me, and to many others, was her openness about her life with mental illness and her transparency about medication, treatment, and recovery. Fisher lived with bipolar disorder and addiction, and her candor served as a rejection of shame and stigma. Over the course of her life, she extended a lifeline to fans who dealt with similar struggles while campaigning for more accessible treatment and care options.
Years later, we still mourn the void left by Fisher's passing. But in moments of grief, it's also important to honor those passed by amplifying what mattered to them while they were still with us. Below, we've collected our top 30 favorite Carrie Fisher quotes from her literary work, taking care to highlight those words which made us laugh, think, smile, or just feel a little less alone.
Our favorite quotes from Carrie Fisher’s memoirs
1. “If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
2. "I am truly a product of Hollywood in-breeding. When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result." — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
3. “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—if I'm quiet enough—I hear angels sing.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
4. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
5. “Resentment is like drinking a poison and waiting for the other person to die.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
6. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
7. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
8. “People are still asking me if I knew Star Wars was going to be that big of a hit. Yes, we all knew. The only one who didn't know was George Lucas.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
9. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
10. “I decided to ride the lightning instead of extinguishing the light of life that had once shone out of my eyes.” — Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking
11. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, Shockaholic
12. “I'll go hang out with a bunch of robots for a few months and then return to my life and try to figure out what I want to do when I grow up." — Carrie Fisher, Shockaholic
13. “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. It had always been my salvation.” — Carrie Fisher, Shockaholic
14. “Do not let what you think they think of you make you stop and question everything you are.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
15. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
16. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
17. “Someone has to stand still for you to love them. My choices are always on the run.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
18. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
19. “I've got to learn something from my mistakes instead of establishing a new record to break.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
20. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
21. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
22. “I don’t want to make anyone else look stupid. That’s a privilege I reserve for myself.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
23. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
Our favorite quotes from Carrie Fisher’s novels
24. “I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere.” — Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge
25. “Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.” — Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge
26. “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 piñata stuffed with tender nuances and pent-up passions.” — Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge
27. "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 eventually becomes known to the other person.” — Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge
28. “She wanted 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.” — Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge
29. “You know the bad thing about being a survivor...You keep having to get into difficult situations in order to show off your gift.” — Carrie Fisher, The Best Awful
30. “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.” — Carrie Fisher, Surrender the Pink
