Meryl Streep

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

I'm never so sure as I was in my mid-20s.

Don't give up or give in in the face of patronising ridicule, amused disdain, or being ignored.

Obsession is an attractive thing. People who are really, really interested and good at one thing and smart are attractive, if they're men.

America doesn't reward people of my age, either in day-to-day life or for their performances.

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

It is well that the earth is round that we do not see too far ahead.

Sometimes with my children, I remember exactly how I felt as the child in this situation, not just how it feels to be me.

There are wonderfully talented actresses. It's a really rich field. There isn't as rich a field of material.

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

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

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

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.

You can't suppress the things that make us human. It's pointless to try.

Show business has been really, really good to me because I can work and take a lot of time off, and I'm extremely undisciplined person.

I can't stand most things that I see.

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.

Grace, respect, reserve, and empathetic listening are qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now.

I need to go where people are serious about acting.

I have a very busy life, and not many people who have a career and four kids go out a lot to the movies.

Every single decision I make about what material I do, what I'm putting out in the world, is because of my children.

It's a good thing to imagine yourself doing something you think you can't. I do that every day because, basically, if I had it my way, I'd just stay home and think about what I'm having for supper.

The work will stand, no matter what.

It's amazing how easily people are led to fury and chaos. Unhappy people with guns are not going to make this country great.

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

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.

You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.

I'm thrilled when I get nominated. I don't count how many and I don't remember how many I've had. I just know it's a lot.

The key to every actor is deep, deep insecurity.

Don't waste so much time thinking about how much you weigh. There is no more mind-numbing, boring, idiotic, self-destructive diversion from the fun of living.

The work is the most fun; it seems illicit how much fun it is.

Chris Cooper is one of my favorite actors in the world. I've seen him in most everything he's done.

All that attention to the perfect lighting, the perfect this, the perfect that, I find terribly annoying.

I don't know why I don't watch a lot of movies; I can barely keep up with the things my friends are in. There isn't enough time in life.

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

I didn't have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do.

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.

There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth.

Expensive clothes are a waste of money.

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

I couldn't care less about fashion. If I had taken any clothes home, they would have remained in my closet for the rest of their existence.

I don't like to be gone all weekend and at night too. Because for 20 years, I've had children who are in school.

I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can't imagine eschewing one for the other.

What does it take to be the first female anything? It takes grit, and it takes grace.

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.

Personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don't think it really changes.

How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You cant argue with them. Thats their perception.

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

I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.

The aggregate of everybody's emotion, it's such a powerful thing. You can see it in the Trump rallies, where people - I just know, in their living rooms, would be better people - are driven to the worst possibilities by the bloodlust in a crowd. It just gets ginned up, and they're outside of themselves.

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

My family really does come first. It always did and always will.

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.

I have four to five months, tops, per year to give to my acting work.

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

People say, When you have children, everything changes. But maybe things are awakened that were already there.

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.

I have a very good life - I'm lucky enough not to be deprived.

How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.

Service is the only thing that's important about love. Everybody is worried about 'losing yourself' - all this narcissism. Duty. We can't stand that idea now either... But duty might be a suit of armor you put on to fight for your love.

I think you have to listen to the people who are deeply unhappy. You have to find the source of it and not overreact to the craziness in it.

I'm really interested in the collaborative thing. It's what makes it scary because you never know what it's going to end up like. But you hope. You put yourself in the hands of the best people you can find, and you're completely dependent on the kindness of strangers and their commitment. It's like this mutual delusion.

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.

The more you are in this business, the more humbled by it you become.

Enough people write about me every day without even interviewing me.

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

I'm a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers with whom I work because I have very strong feelings about the subject.

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

For me, clothes are kind of character; I don't follow fashion or understand trends.

I want to feel my life while I'm in it.

Interestingly, young people don't come to you for advice. Especially the ones who are related to you.

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

I always feel like I can't do it, that I can't go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all.

The reason I chose the movies that I did was based on where they were being filmed.

I'm older. There's some sort of seniority. As a matter of fact, the seniority ebbs as you get older.

Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending, or acting, is a very valuable life skill and we do it all the time.

I'm all over the place.

I go to a lot of movies where people are all around me laughing, and I feel like I'm from outer space because I find it dangerous and stupid and horrible and degrading to women and all these things.

I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs. Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

We are who we're going to be when we're very old, and when we're very old we are who we were when we were 8.

I remember, as I was hovering around 40, I thought each movie would be my last, really.

The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.

If I am not confident that I can portray the character perfectly on screen, I won't even try.