“I had to keep on acting deaf if i wanted to hear at all.”

“I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wonder if I can ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.”

“The big men are all deaf; they don't want to hear the little squeaking as they walk across the street on cleated boots.”

“If toes had eyes,then I could seehow my feet know where to go,but toes are blind.And how is it that my tonguespeaks words it cannot hear?Because for all its eloquence,the tongue itself is deaf,and flaps in soundlessness.”

“And the blind man said to the deaf man, "Do you see what I hear?”

“Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?”