Meryl Streep Quotes

I understand men much better than most women I know.

I'd love to be a man for a day, just to see what it's like.

I don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out, 'Gosh, I wonder how guys feel,' because most every piece of art I look at invites me into that experience.

I view myself as a male artist.

When I was 16, I felt I might be left with some effeminacy because of all the dancing. I was so full of classical dance that I wanted to get away and do something else.

To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.

I'm regarded quite asexually by a lot of people. And the people that understand me the best are nearer to what I understand about me.

Some people have bigger egos than others. You have to take a lot of abuse, and take it in and not respond, because you don't want conflicts on the movie, you don't want to start screaming at people even when they treat you - even when they're not behaving properly, because you want them to do their job, and keep on doing it.

Women are better than they are reputed to be: they don't mock the tears men shed unless they themselves are responsible for them.

If you find yourself in a relationship or even a friendship with someone who's conflicted with their gender identity, just be kind. This is not a life choice. This is something that you are born with. This is like being born with a gene for being tall, short, black, white, gay, straight - it's not a choice.

People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person.

I know I have a fairly strong feminine side. I find myself really distanced from male behavior.

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.

I don't know anything except being female, so I don't know the opposite of it.

Our jobs as artists is to make sure our art tells a real story and let people see themselves in these characters. It's about having a conversation about being better people.

I've tried the female thing. I was in a movie called Dinner for Schmucks a couple of years ago with Steve Carell and I created a female character for that movie. And after a few months of trying her out on the road it just didn't work. I mean, I can think like a terrorist, I can think like a white trash guy, I can even try and think like an African American, but I can't figure out how a woman.

Men generally do not see women as competition.

Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.

I take my hat off to the ladies. The amount of grooming-plucking and shaving and all the other things men never have to do. I went down and spent time with transvestites in London in the clubs and all that. Got an insight to that world, and it's a mad world, but they are very warm and very open people. It was a great experience.

I was assigned male at birth, is the way I like to put it, because I think... we're born who we are... and the gender thing is something someone imposes on you. And so, I was assigned male at birth, but I always felt like I was a girl.

It took me a long time to realize that being a girl is so much more powerful than being a guy, but I really saw myself as boy for a long while.

If I hadn't been a woman, I'd have been a drag queen

The reason that gets me is, and the greatest part of my job and what I do, is the humanity of it and there's certain moments where that really cuts through.

I had difficulty being friends with women who hadn't worked in either the sex or beauty industries. I felt like other women sometimes overvalued beauty and sexuality, when in actuality, they're just parts of a job.

As women, we're always in negotiation with how we're being perceived versus how we feel.