Best 216 quotes of Meryl Streep on MyQuotes

Acting is being susceptible to what is around you, and it's letting it all come in. Acting is a clearing away of everything except what you want and need - and it's wonderful in that way. And when it's right, you're lost in the moment.

Acting is my way of investigating human nature and having fun at the same time

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

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?

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

A man has always been seen as someone who works hard and has a full-time occupation. I think women should have the same opportunity and not have any stigma attached to them if they choose to pursue their careers.

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

And it interferes with your ability to be a good actress if you're constantly aware of yourself as a person. To me, it isn't valuable to think about how I'm coming off all the time if I'm trying to create a character, because that's a process that I love. It's like falling in love and surrendering to another person or a character.

And it took to "The Devil Wears Prada" to play someone tough, who had to make hard decisions, who was running an organization, and sometimes that takes making tough decisions for a certain kind of man to empathize. That's the word - empathize. Feel the story through her. And that's the first time anybody has ever said that they felt that way.

And she [Margaret Thatcher] also had a sort of a way, like a railroad train, of going, taking a breath and starting quite quietly and making a point in a way that you don't really know that this point is going to be made through several examples, and there will be not be a break in the speaking voice at any point.

Being an actor lets me be a million different things.

But for me, it [singing] was a way to get out the feeling of the song, and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing.

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

Empathy is at the heart of the actor's art.

Every easy choice will have its consequence tomorrow.

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

Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up.

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

Everything that truly makes us happy is quite simple: love, sex, and food! Everything else - power, influence, strength - all those things can overpower what's important in life. But as long as you have food and shelter over your head, if the necessities are taken care of, what makes us happy on top of that is very simple.

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.

Expensive clothes are a waste of money.

First I'm going to thank Don because when you thank your husband at the end of the speech they play him out with the music and I want him to know that everything I value most in our lives you've given me.

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

For young women, I would say don't worry so much about your weight. Girls spend way too much time thinking about that, and there are better things. For young men, and women, too, what makes you different or weird-that's your strength. Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up. I used to hate my nose. Now I don't. It's OK.

Guard your good mood.

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

Having wrinkles is at once strange and exciting.

How do I do that preparation [for film]? Just an immersion. I have a musician's, I guess, ear for the sound of the voice but it's also important to me, in the case of [playing] someone who is controversial, to get the outlines of the character right because how they present themselves to the world has a great deal to do with how people feel about them.

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

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.

I am not always happy. I am happy in front of the press. I can be extremely grumpy, ask my husband.

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

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

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 didn't go to Catholic school but I had a tough teacher, a tough math teacher.I remember everything that guy taught me. I really do.

I do know that we have delusions about ourselves in what we sound like.

I don't have a favorite director just like I don't have a favorite color or I don't have a favorite food. I like everything.

I don't have very much interest in trends and fashions. I don't follow the fashion shows and stuff like that into my real life. But I'm very, very interested in how people put themselves together, how women and men announce themselves to the world, through what they put on their bodies. Whether we choose Birkenstocks or whether we choose Burberry - it all signifies something and it's really interesting to me.

I don't know what my image is. I went to France to publicize Marvin's Room, and one really smart young woman journalist said to me, "You know, when I told people I was going to interview Meryl Streep they were so excited... all ze women in my office, they love you so much. But ze men - they are afraid of you.

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 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 don't think we can say that all working women will get divorced - it's so dangerous to make these things emblematic of anything - but having said that, every person who has a big, important job and tries to have a family, has to make decisions every single minute.

I do think sometimes when scrolling through the TV and there's something on and I look at it and I think oh, my god. I thought I was fat? What is my problem?

I feel like I run a business although I haven't one. It's planning, planning, and planning.

I feel much more comfortable dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. I'm wearing very fancy clothes today. It's Valentino. But the film ["Devil Wears Prada"] did not make me change my style. If anything, it has made me appreciate the people who do this every morning in a serious way, get dressed up and really put together that look. I mean, wow. It's amazing.

I feel very strongly that we make decisions about what we're giving to the world, what we're withholding from the world, by virtue of what we put on our bodies.

If everybody that had two cars had a Prius instead of an SUV, we wouldn't be in the Middle East right now.

I follow no doctrine. I don't belong to a church or a temple or a synagogue or an ashram.

I found it unbearable when I allow the song to meet the music, to allow the story to meet the music.

If you have a brain, you are obliged to use it.