Meryl Streep Quotes

40 quotations by Meryl Streep

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.

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

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

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

The work will stand, no matter what.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

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

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

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

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'm all over the place.

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.

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

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I can't stand most things that I see.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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