Top 100 Meryl Streep Quotes

I can’t stand most things that I see.

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.

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

I let the actions of my life stand for what I am as a human being. Contend with that, not the words.

I was offered, within one year, three different witch roles. It was almost like the world was saying – or the studios were saying – ‘We don’t know what to do with you.’

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

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.

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

Nobody can swashbuckle a quick-witted riposte like Emma Thompson. She’s a writer, a real writer, and she has a relish for the well-chosen word.

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

Hillary Clinton has taken some fire over 40 years of her fight for families and children. How does she do it? That’s what I want to know. Where does she get her grit and her grace? Where do any of our female firsts, our pathbreakers, where do they find that strength?

People at agencies and studios, including the parent boards, might look around the table at the decision-making level and feel something is wrong if half their participants are not women. Because our tastes are different, what we value is different. Not better, different.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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 have a very clear understanding of what my voice is. It’s like a B voice. It hovers around B-minus, B-plus. I have great friends who are wonderful singers, and I know I’ll never be able to do that. But singing through a character is something I can do.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 strategize falling in love, can you? It’s never worked. People love you the most and set you up, and it doesn’t work because you can’t predict these things. You fall in love serially.

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

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.

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

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

I am a humanist. I am for nice, easy balance.

Disney, who brought joy, arguably, to billions of people, was, perhaps, or had some… racist proclivities. He formed and supported an anti-Semitic industry lobby. And he was certainly, on the evidence of his company’s policies, a gender bigot.

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

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.

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.

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 think your self emerges more clearly over time.

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

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.

I let the actions of my life stand for what I am as a human being. Contend with that, not the words.

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.

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.

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

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

I need to go where people are serious about acting.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I’m all over the place.

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

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

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

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.

The work will stand, no matter what.

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

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

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.

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

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

Hillary Clinton has taken some fire over 40 years of her fight for families and children. How does she do it? That’s what I want to know. Where does she get her grit and her grace? Where do any of our female firsts, our pathbreakers, where do they find that strength?

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.

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