Badass Quotes From Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher wasn't just Princess Leia or the just the daughter of two celebrities. She was a body positive, clap back queen who ruled social media as well as the silver screen all with her dog, Gary, in tow. While spending years downplaying the signature hairstyle and jaw-dropping bikini that launched her acting career into outer space, her wit, eccentricities, and honesty kept the world engrossed in her aura — and that comes through in some of Carrie Fisher's best quotes.

After finding the strength to speak out about her battle with bipolar disorder and addiction during the early 2000s, the actor reemerged as an unapologetic, perfectly imperfect role model. She went on to find solace in writing her humorous memoirs and performing in her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. In her book of the same name, she wrote “I feel I'm very sane about how crazy I am.” This sentiment alone captures the spirit of a woman who had risen, fallen, and persevered. Finding comfort in discomfort while living in the public eye your entire life is a pretty typical Hollywood tale. But what sets Carrie Fisher apart from the standard celebrity narrative was her ability to craft her own on her terms. She was a woman who lived publicly, unabashedly, and shamelessly to her very last day.

Rather than wallowing in yet another, untimely celebrity death, let's revisit Fisher's most inspiring, uplifting, and just plain badass quotes that made us fall in love with her in the first place.

On being an open book

"I think I do overshare," Fisher told NPR back in November while discussing her new book The Princess Diarist. "It's my way of trying to understand myself ... It creates community when you talk about private things."

On Hollywood beauty standards for women

"We treat beauty like an accomplishment, and that is insane," Fisher said in Good Housekeeping magazine in January 2016, "Everyone in LA 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!'"

On mental illness

“I outlasted my problems,” she told Diane Sawyer on ABC's PrimeTime in 2000. “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.”

On knowing the limits of humor

"...I said that I was living in a metaphor. My big gag was “metaphors be with you," she said in People magazine in March 2013 when speaking of her struggles with bipolar disorder. "That’s the big gag I got out of it. Word play-I can’t not do that! But it’s not funny. The only lesson for me, or anybody, is that you have to get help."

On confidence

“What’s important is the action," she said in the Herald Tribune in April 2013. "You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

On planning her life

"I don’t," she also told the Herald Tribune. "You cross your fingers and hope you don’t get gobsmacked by it in the middle of something."

On perseverance

“Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell,” she wrote in her memoir Wishful Drinking.

On being a wife

"I don't have wifely skills," she said in Esquire magazine in January 2002. "I tried to learn them. I tried to learn to cook and clean and stuff like that. But then I realized it's not skills you need, it's impulses. It's having the impulses to care for someone.

On reclaiming life

"I've gotten to an age where I enjoy my life," she said in a Q&A with WebMD. "I've spent enough time struggling with it, and at this point it's living on one side of the magnifying glass; I stay on the side of making big things appear small."

On being a survivor

“You know the bad thing about being a survivor... You keep having to get into difficult situations in order to show off your gift,” she wrote in her novel The Best Awful.

On success

“The thing about having it all is, it should include having the ability to have it all," she wrote in her semi-autobiographical novel Postcards from the Edge. 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.”

It goes without saying that the force was strong with Carrie Fisher. To the princess, the advocate, the woman rest in peace.