Meryl Streep Thinking Quotations

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.

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.

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

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

I think the best role models for women are people who are fruitfully and confidently themselves, who bring light into the world.

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.

I would never say don't do acting [to my kids], because I think it is a glorious profession and I am so thankful for everything it has let me express.

If you raise children, you forget what age they are. I mean you don't literally forget, but you treat a 13-year-old like she's 10 and there's a big difference in those three years and they can't stand it. They want to be treated like they're 17 when they're 13. And sometimes you can't help thinking of them as if they were 10 or 10 months old because it's all so recent. So we do overprotect sometimes.

She [ Anne Hathaway] is just a delicious talent. I think she can delight us for years and years in lots and lots of different things.Her own personality is so appealing and fresh and open and warm. I think she can have a unique career.

I do honestly think that if women were running the world there would be more investment in peace, because basically as women we do not want to see our children killed. Maybe I am completely idealistic, but until we see women in equal positions of power in the world, I just think that we are doomed.

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.

You are thinking about where your brain is at any time. It's very tricky but it's why women are very well suited to rule the world in the future, because of the multi-tasking they do and their ability to be moving in 15 directions at once. It's the women who behave like men, who focus in that singular way with the blinkers on, who have problems. You get a lot more done that way maybe, but you also lose the perception of who's behind you, what's going on, the 360 degrees of it, the whole picture of life that we do have as women.

Sometimes you look out the window and you look at all the windows, and think inside very single one of them is somebody with some huge, weird, terrible problem, some great jokes.

I have a lot to say about the world, clearly. I can't put together a clear sentence about it all, but through the work I can say what I think.

So it's not a thing that's a struggle. It's work, but it's not a struggle. It's fun. And she had a very particular way of emphasizing points and making her point, and that had to do with bringing out a word that you didn't normally think was the most important word in the sentence.

They filled our lives so much, the films they were in made us laugh, think and cry. Through their work they shared a piece of our soul. We will miss them with the sadness with which we miss an old friend.

When I was in - at Vassar, and I came from a public high school in New Jersey, there was - that class still existed. I think it's pretty much gone, but there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from New Jersey.

When I was younger I spent way too much time thinking about me being too fat. So stupid.

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?

The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.

I get nervous the more time I have to think about something so I deliberately don't give myself too much time between jobs. I take a big break and then I start working again usually.

That's my way in the very beginning - how to enter it [a role]. Very quickly in the process, I don't think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you put on lipstick. It's all a piece of a person, and it's all driven by conviction.

I really think there's a difference between how men critics see things than how women tend to. And I don't want to make that - it's not a generality and I don't want to say that, but I just feel - I know I do the same thing. There are certain things that I just am not that interested in. Certain kinds of films - I just don't enter them.

There are some days when I, myself , think I'm overrated

We're viewed as equals - but we're still not there yet. [...] The challenge for our girls, I think, is dealing with that resistance. How can we lift and defuse it, how do we make it so our equality is not so threatening? Our girls are going to have to contend with that. I contend with it right now in every realm I operate in.

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!

The fairy tale that really scared me was Bluebeard. That's the one where he just kills one after another of these woman, these wives, that he lures up to the castle. I just think about fairy tales as stories women told their children to warn them? To keep them safe, to make sure they married up, all the things that would have safeguarded them in the olden days.

We all make the mistake thinking that how you look makes you more worthy of love.

Acting has to reach everybody on some level - it's a communication of feeling - but as far as judging the work is concerned, it is, I think, something that actors know about.

I think that we pay much more attention to fashion and our hair, skin and foreheads, our abdominal muscles and shoes than what is happening in the world. We willingly take that 'drug' and go along with that.

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?

It is interesting how fashion filters down and we discover in the "Devil Wears Prada" that we're all prey to trends, even if we think we are not.

I think that you find your own way. You have your own rules. You have your own understanding of yourself, and that's what you're going to count on. In the end, it's what feels right to you. Not what your mother told you. Not what some actress told you. Not what anybody else told you but the still, small voice.

I think it is typical for many men to have problems when their wives make more money then they do, or when their wives are higher on the corporate ladder than they find themselves. I think that often is an issue.

My daughters had helped me to stop worrying about my appearance over the years. I wasted so many years thinking I wasn't pretty enough and why didn't I have Jessica Lange's body or someone else's legs? What a waste of time.