Meryl Streep Quotes

Great Art is Great because it inspired you greatly. If it didn't, no matter what the critics, the museums and the galleries say, it's not great art for you.

In our democratic culture people often think it is threatening to judge another person's taste. Some are even offended by the suggestion that there is a difference between good and bad taste, or that it matters what you look at or read or listen to.

If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he's ever read, and another person will say it's absolutely idiotic. I mean, there's no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values against which art could be measured. I didn't trust my own subjective responses.

I realized what interested me as a student of film was one thing and the movies that I liked were another.

There's a critic that I love, Manohla Dargis of the 'L.A. Weekly.' I like the underground point of view; it's my old radical sympathies. Maybe I like her because she likes my movies.

I don't believe in expertise. I don't believe that a film critic feels a film more deeply than any person who walks into a theater. I don't believe that.

With women, you always have to make an educated decision to figure out what they're thinking. It's not one that's necessarily sympathetic, always. Of course, we're all human beings, but the gender thing is big thing. And a great thing.

Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

I go into a gallery or museum, and I realize that I don't have to formulate any opinions if I don't want to. I don't have to think this thing through and write about it at any great length. I can think about it if I want to; if not, I can just walk out. So I can enjoy painting really a lot more than I could when I had that sort of pressure.

There are a lot of movies that are badly made that I love, and there are a lot of movies that are just beautifully made but I don't like them. And critics have a tendency - that's all they focus on, which is, "I like it. I don't like it. It's good. It's bad."

Seeing a play, listening to music - you'll always contextualize it in your own way. Whoever you are, wherever you are; I think that's really important.

To me, All About Steve movie is sweet-natured and sweet-hearted, and I can't get enough sweet-hearted movies. I want to be inspired right now. I think things are pretty tough in the world. And people at the première were loving it - I mean, loving it! So I'm so sorry to hear people saying that it is the worst movie of 2009. I don't buy it at all.

I never really think about my gender, first and foremost - until a door is closed to you. Until you can see a parallel opportunity with a man in a similar place in his career and you think, That opportunity is not open to me or my fellow actresses. That's interesting.

It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people. I think people's interactions with art are their own, and will be far more interesting and sophisticated than anything that I could come up with.

The designer side of me has many ideas on how the shoes or woman should look, but the man is thinking 'would I want to see my girl in those shoes?'

I don't like filmmakers to tell people how they should react to their movies. I absolutely have favorites, and I have others that I'm mortified by, but I keep that to myself. I think I've managed to find some very interesting things that I've been very satisfied with recently. I don't know if that's gonna keep going.

Nobody's ever gonna hold [ Lena Dunham] accountable. She's a liberal and she's a woman and so she's doubly indemnified against any serious analysis of what the hell she says or thinks. It's a clear example of the double standard out there.

I don't think you can tell somebody how they should collect. I think it's just about being turned on by art.At the end of the day, some people just kind of get it. They don't all get it in the same way or get the same artists, but it's a journey that excites them.

I admire Freud a great deal as a person and thinker. Despite everything, I find his work very, very rich, but I think that for women he has been absolutely disastrous. And even more so, everyone who came after him.

I think the differences between men and women, it's kind of hard to define what those are and the challenges, what they are. I think there are challenging things for everybody.

I once said to a boy, ‘You’re a really good kisser,’ and he said, ‘You’re only as good as the person you’re kissing.' I think it’s the same with the music. If someone [says], ‘Your music is really provocative,’ I’m only as provocative as the person that’s listening to it.

Acting, music, painting... it's very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

I think it's just that as a creative person, in all the different things that I've done or ways that I've found to express myself, I've consistently come up against resistance in certain areas. I think that the world is not comfortable with female sexuality. It's always coming from a male point of view, and a woman is being objectified by a man - and even women are comfortable with that. But when a woman does it, ironically, women are uncomfortable with it. I think a lot of that has to do with conditioning.