Melissa Mathison Quotes

Novels teach you that actions have consequences. They help you grow up.

I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my character.

One of the reasons I got into acting to begin with is that I was trying to figure out how life worked. It was interesting to me to try and follow how other people, real or imaginary, would deal with problems, because I was trying to deal with my own problems.

Character is primary. What happens as far as plot and events is not as intriguing to me as what's happening inside this particular person.

Fiction is an easy way to talk about issues: I think it feels less preachy. You can have the students discuss characters in the book as opposed to hypothetical situations, or as opposed to opening up about themselves, unless they really want to.

Ten years of character development affords you a lot. You get a chance to dig deeper and deeper and deeper into a person.

When I read a good story, I often start thinking, 'Should I live my life according to what this character chooses and values?' It makes me think. I feel like I grew up to be a more mature person while thinking about character development in these fictional situations.

I like to go to the movies and watch characters who make me question how I see the world.

Someone who's passed through the circumstances that I have has to make the decision either to be a good person or a bad person, and I decide to become better at every opportunity.

My work is to reach people with ideas, hopes, dreams, encouragement, insight, and revelation. That's what an actor wants to do.

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.

Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to image the world through someone else's eyes, and it allows you to try to empathize with situations that you haven't actually experienced.

Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It's about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life.

I think that's one of the most important things that books do: not to teach you anything, but to help you teach yourself by just being in the world of the book and having your own thoughts and reactions and noticing your own reactions and thoughts and learning about yourself that way.

Learning what you don't want to do is pretty valuable, it may be as valuable as figuring out what it is you do want to do.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

I love acting because it's empowering. It empowers me.

If you can't read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

Obviously, as you grow up, no one's ever 100 percent proud of every decision that they've made, and that's OK. I think as long as you learn from your mistakes and don't make them over and over again, you're on the right path.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

I try to read everything that I can about myself because Saddam Hussein didn't read his reviews and he thought he was winning!

I like telling stories of imperfect people because most people are imperfect.

If you read literature, you put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You learn from great figures in literature.

What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful.

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