Strings in Python are sequences of characters that can be manipulated and accessed using indexes and slicing operations. A string's individual characters can be accessed using indexes like str[0], with negative indexes counting backwards from the end. The length of a string can be found using len(str). Strings are immutable but their values can be reassigned. Strings can be concatenated with + and checked for substrings with the in operator. They support various quote styles and multiline strings using triple quotes.