Quotes By Meryl Streep

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

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.

I can't stand most things that I see.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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'm all over the place.

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.

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.

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

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