Meryl Streep

“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.”

“Some people are artists. Some, themselves, are art.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.”

“For me, clothes are a part of the character. They can't just be clothes.”

“Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean listening to one another.”

“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.”

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

“True freedom is understanding that we have a choice in who and what we allow to have power over us.”

“Power, that's one thing, but love of family and of siblings is more important, is more powerful than any other power - at least earthly power, at least human power.”

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I've become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me.”

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

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

“You have to embrace getting older. Life is precious, and when you've lost a lot of people, you realize each day is a gift.”