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.

Meryl Streep

Categorized in : Thinking Challenges Girl

The formula of happiness and success is just, being actually yourself, in the most vivid possible way you can.

Meryl Streep

happiness-and-success vivid way

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

Meryl Streep

stay-strong success life

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.

Meryl Streep

voice mother thinking

Everything that truly makes us happy is quite simple - love, sex and food!

Meryl Streep

simple-love simple sex

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

Meryl Streep

i-dont-care being-yourself inspirational

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

Meryl Streep

fundraising compassion inspirational

That is the simple secret. Always take your heart to work.

Meryl Streep

simple secret heart

It's amazing what you can get if you quietly, clearly and authoritatively demand it.

Meryl Streep

demand ifs

Pretending is a very valuable life skill.

Meryl Streep

pretending valuable skills

Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.

Meryl Streep

change motivational positive

Fear focuses the mind.

Meryl Streep

mind

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

Meryl Streep

role-models light thinking

As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for everyone else.

Meryl Streep

easier who-you-are want

For young women, I would say don't worry so much about your weight. Girls spend way too much time thinking about that, and there are better things. For young men, and women, too, what makes you different or weird-that's your strength. Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up. I used to hate my nose. Now I don't. It's OK.

Meryl Streep

girl hate men

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

Meryl Streep

true-freedom understanding choices

One of the most important keys to acting is curiosity. I am curious to the point of being nosy. What that means is you want to devour lives. You're eager to put on their shoes and wear their clothes and have them become a part of you. All people contain mystery, and when you act, you want to plumb that mystery until everything is known to you.

Meryl Streep

shoes keys mean

I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.

Meryl Streep

opposites believe people

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.

Meryl Streep

inspiration art needs

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.

Meryl Streep

getting-older each-day people

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.

Meryl Streep

fashion hair thinking