Quotes from Caroline Calloway

I think a lot of people feel shame when they revisit their years of addiction.

I spend a lot of time unpacking the pain surrounding my addiction - both my own and the pain I caused other people.

I think it would be hard to find an American who, during their first week at Cambridge didn't genuinely feel like it was fairy tale.

My life isn't going to stop because my father's dead and my trolls won't stop and people won't stop writing about me.

How do you hold on to the idea that you are good and kind and deserving of love when the whole world thinks you're evil? It's really disorienting to see this character with your face and your name and your details catch internet wildfire. It really bothered me.

If I'm not ready to open something up to the scrutiny of the internet, I don't write about it.

A lot of people think I hang around Cambridge as this Hogwarts-obsessed Anglophile looking for anyone with a British accent.

I know people think that having a regular publisher is more prestigious, there is even this idea that self-publishing is a result of being snubbed. But self-publishing really appeals to me.

I am more respectful of the parasocial relationship of myself and my fans than anything Damien Hirst does between himself and his collectors.

The articles about my workshops are dripping in derision but if you speak to the people who attended the events, people loved it and thought they got their money's worth.

You know, when I was little, I actually did want to be an actor. But I only wanted to play myself. So Instagram is sort of perfect for me.

I love fame. I love being written about. I don't really mind if people think I'm a bad writer, if they don't understand my weird Instagram performance art or they find my long captions annoying. That's part of the package of being in the public eye, and honestly I find it exhilarating.

I wrote the captions that built my brand.

The publishing world has been very slow to adapt to the digital world.

The idea that my life would be something I shared with the public wasn't just something that I assumed - it was something that I actively wanted. I still want it.

Mental illness and depression are the reason why I no longer have a father.

In the U.S. we have the mentality that you can make it on your own.

Even at my most depressed and low-functioning, as soon as you put another person in the room with me, I would perk up and be happy to see them.

What was so comforting was that the more I started being honest on my blog, the more people responded.

People care about such bizarre and specific things about me.

If you build a life around an identity that springs from your own imagination, is it ever inauthentic?

It's not that I don't experience absolute sadness, which is very unentertaining, but I think - when I'm being really honest about myself - I think there's, like, a really performative streak in my personality.

I'm always grateful when people share stuff on social media that I've never seen before, because it gives me a bit more strength to hold more space for the unsavory parts of my life that cause me shame.

With everything that's happened since I was exposed as a scammer, I can't lie, it's been good for business. Now I can sell my story for way more than my original book deal ever was.