Ashley Greene

“In California, I do like to just chill out and go to the beach, but I love the energy here. I feel very productive when I'm in New York.”

“I've gotten very good at detaching whenever I have to go away for three months, which I realize is hard on friends and kind of selfish.”

“I have a certain way of thinking where I see something, and I know that I want it and I make up my mind - and that's pretty much all there is to it. It was like, This is what I want to do, and I'm going, and everything's going to work out. I'm going to be an actress. There was no way around it.”

“Growing up my whole life, my mom was telling me how incredible and special I was and that I was going to change the world. I think it's important for girls to know that they can change the world, that they do have an impact.”

“But I don't do the diet thing anymore. I'm a big believer in feeding your body what it needs. Deny yourself something and you're going to end up shoving your face full of it.”

“I would have loved to do 'Alice in Wonderland.' Being a 'Bond' girl would always be fun. We had a lot of action in 'Eclipse' and I'd definitely like to continue down the action road. I want to do a romantic period piece, but those are really hard to get made because they're very expensive and there's not a huge demographic.”

“What 'Twilight' gave me was years to consider how I wanted to work otherwise.”

“I really would love to do a piece like Julia Roberts or Charlize Theron in 'Erin Brockovich' or 'North Country.' They were both so amazing and so inspiring. I would love to touch someone in the way their performances touched me.”

“In my second year in Los Angeles, when I was eighteen, I wasn't getting any bookings, so I stopped going out, stopped partying. It was a matter of getting to the work. I had to focus.”

“If you ever, ever, ever want to complain about what's going on in the U.S., you should vote because then you have a right to. If you want to complain, you should vote.”

“I was working at a restaurant, I booked the role in 'Twilight,' put in my two weeks' notice, got fitted, flew to Portland, filmed, and then it started getting hype. That helped me get my foot into certain doors before the movie even came out.”

“I want to play a role of a 24-year-old woman, not 17-year-old girls. So I have picked a couple of films like 'Butter' to show that. And it's perfectly fine not to do anything for a year if I don't find the right thing.”

“I'm always changing. I still have the same morals and values and foundation of who I was, growing up in Jacksonville, FL, but I'm such a different person from who I was when I was 17. You live and you learn and you grow.”

“I don't have anything saying, 'I'm going to do this many new films, and this many comedies.' But, it's always exciting for me, whenever it is a new character and something I haven't done before, and that's part of what draws me to it.”

“You can't control the paparazzi. But if you go to Coachella you're going to get photographed. Whereas if you're at home, walking down the street you probably won't. It's something I've learnt to navigate my way around but I try to keep my private life private.”

“I wanted to be a lawyer. I realized I don't really want to be a lawyer. I want to play a lawyer. Thank God I figured that out.”

“I'm lucky because my dad taught me to be frugal and save. And that's important because I want to know that I don't have to take an acting job for two or three years if I don't want to and that I'll still be able to make my house and car payments and buy food for my dogs.”

“Yeah, I get to fight in 'Eclipse.' My trainer is teaching me MMA right now. So. Cool.”

“I can still love an ex as a person, regardless if the breakup was bad. I would never wish anything negative on them. It takes more energy to hate them than to wish them well.”

“I remember my first acting class: I was like, 'That's it.' If I know that I want to do something then I'm going to do it and there's no stopping me, whether it's if I want to take a movie part or don't, or eat sushi for lunch or don't. There's always a very clear goal. Once I figure out what I want that's it.”