“It was the challenge of life too, was it not? People could never be fully understood. They were ever changing, different people at different times and under different circumstances and influences. And always growing, always creating themselves anew.How impossible it was to know another human being.How impossible to know even oneself.”

“She was not sure that her deafness had strengthened her character. She was not even sure she had met a challenge. A silent world was as natural to her as a noisy one must be to them, she reflected. But people tended to assume that deaf persons could function as people only if they learned to conform to a world of sound. What about the challenge of silence? Very few people of hearing ever accepted it or even knew that there was a challenge there. People of hearing feared silence...”

“People, especially some religious people. would have us believe that it is wrong . even a sin, to love oneself. It is not. It is the basic, essential love. If you do not love yourself, you cannot possibly love anyone else. Not fully and truly.”

“That was the heart of the difference, she thought. In her world she had learned to be . Other people seemed to gain their sense of identity and worth from doing. ”

“He would never know know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words - even if she could speak or write them - could never explain her world to him.”

“Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamers who never really lived life at all.”

“I'm terrified that I will never be able to put him from my mind. I don't love him but I'm afraid that he will make it impossible for me ever to love anyone else.”