Quotes from Meryl Streep

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

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.

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.

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

In my own experience of male and female directors, people have a much, much harder time taking a direct command from a woman. It's somehow very difficult for people.

The thing that you have to fight the most when you lose is you feel like the biggest failure in the world.

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

Fear focuses the mind.

In other characters, it's driven by insecurity, or it's driven by fear, or - there's always a driver. And all the physical manifestations, you need your way in.

We need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration to keep going on the days that your low. We need each other in that way.

There is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it.

Start by starting.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Expensive clothes are a waste of money.

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

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