Carrie Fisher is most widely known for her turn as Princess Leia in the hugely popular Star Wars films, but the daughter of two entertainers — actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher — was also an acclaimed author renowned for her trenchant wit.
The following is a sampling of memorable lines attributed to Fisher, who died Tuesday after suffering a heart attack during a Dec. 23 flight from London to Los Angeles.
From Twitter:
"If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable." (2011)
"There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed." (2014)
From Fisher's 1987 semi-autobiographical novel, Postcards From the Edge:
"Instant gratification takes too long."
“I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere.”
“Actually, I am a failed anorexic. I have anorexic thinking, but I can't seem to muster the behavior.”
“Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.”
“You know how I always seem to be struggling, even when the situation doesn't call for it?”
“Sometimes I feel like I've got my nose pressed up against the window of a bakery, only I'm the bread.”
“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.”
From her 2008 memoir, Wishful Drinking:
“Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.”
“I feel I'm very sane about how crazy I am.”
“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 quote fictional characters, because I'm a fictional character myself!”
“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?”
From her new memoir, The Princess Diarist:
“Vultures are difficult to charm unless you’re off somewhere rotting in the noonday sun. Casually rotting … a glib cadaver.”
“Someone has to stand still for you to love them. My choices are always on the run.”
“I act like someone in a bomb shelter trying to raise everyone’s spirits.”
Carrie Fisher's second life as a writer
“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 (Star Wars) 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.”
Sources: Goodreads.com, USA TODAY research
