Quotes from Meryl Streep

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

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 know movies are a function of our dream world. And when you project yourself on screen, it's easier to project yourself into what you were, not what you are.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Life is all about making choices and I'm very happy with mine. I have had a wonderful time raising four children and I've also been lucky to have the support of a wonderful husband.

You have been told that Real Life is not like college, and you have been correctly informed. Real Life is more like high school.

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

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

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

If you have been touched by the success fairy, people think you know why. People think success breeds enlightenment and you are duty-bound to spread around like manure. Fertilize those young minds!

It's very humbling to imagine somebody else's really life and their pain ... It's my drug.

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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

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