Meryl Streep Quotes

The formula of happiness and success is just, being actually yourself, in the most vivid possible way you can.

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.

What makes you different or weird, that's your strength.

The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.

It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician.

It's amazing what you can get if you quietly, clearly and authoritatively demand it.

I think the best role models for women are people who are fruitfully and confidently themselves, who bring light into the world.

You have to embrace getting older. Life is precious, and when you've lost a lot of people, you realize each day is a gift.

Everything we say signifies; everything counts, that we put out into the world. It impacts on kids, it impacts on the zeitgeist of the time.

That is the simple secret. Always take your heart to work.

As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for everyone else.

Pretending is a very valuable life skill.

You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.

You don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you.

We need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration to keep going on the days that your low. We need each other in that way.

Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else, too.

Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.

I love acting, of course, but being with my husband and my children always brought me the greatest joy and happiness in life.

Every easy choice will have its consequence tomorrow.

You just have to keep on doing what you do. It's the lesson I get from my husband; he just says, Keep going. Start by starting.

My advice: Don't waste so much time worrying about your skin or your weight. Develop what you do, what you put your hands on in the world.

True freedom is understanding that we have a choice in who and what we allow to have power over us.

The work itself is the reward, and if I choose challenging work, it'll pay me back with interest. At least I'll be interested, even if nobody else is.

I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.

Being a celebrity has taught me to hide but being an actor has opened my soul.

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.

I never give any character I play less respect than I give my own life.

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

When they called my name, I had this feeling I could hear half of America going, 'Oh no. Come on... Her, again?' You know. But, whatever.

My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible.

Fear focuses the mind.

I have always regarded myself as the pillar of my life.

My feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I'm superstitious enough to believe that.

I need to go where people are serious about acting.

If you make the tough decisions, people will hate you today. But they will thank you for generations.

Some people are filled by compassion and a desire to do good, and some simply don't think anything's going to make a difference.

There is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it.

I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.

I just take every day is a miracle and I'm really glad that I'm still working and that people are not sick of me, even though even I'm sick of me a little bit.

What's worse than brutality that dehumanizes women? Tolerance and indifference towards it.

All an actor has, I think, is their heart, really,...that's the place you go for your inspiration. If my heart wasn't filled with them, where would I get stuff? What would I have to express?

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.

The thing that you have to fight the most when you lose is you feel like the biggest failure in the world.

People want what they want. Sometimes you just have to walk in defiance of it and just be yourself.

There's no road map on how to raise a family: it's always an enormous negotiation.

I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I'm honored to be that way for young actors.

Everyone is interesting. Everyone has something unexpected to offer and the job of acting is to pull it out of each other.

Having been let out of the barn once, I know I wouldn't be happy if I were home all the time.