127 Quotes by Marlee Matlin

When I was young I knew I was deaf. I couldn't accept it.

I got a good handshake. A lot of executives tell me I have the best handshake in Hollywood.

When I was 11, I knew that I wanted to write a kid's book and tell the world what it was like being deaf.

I've always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn't all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations.

I've been around since I was 19, I won the Oscar when I was 21, I've had a couple of TV series. I've continued to work despite the predictions of some naysayers.

Every one of us is different in some way, but for those of us who are more different, we have to put more effort into convincing the less different that we can do the same thing they can, just differently.

I like to play around with people who don't know me. Often I'm talking to people through my speaker phone, and after 10 minutes or so they say, 'Wait a minute, Marlee, how can you hear me?' They forget I have an interpreter there who is signing to me as they talk. So I say, 'You know what? I can hear on Wednesdays.'

I can hear you and I can watch your mouth move, and then I put together the sounds and the visual image, and I can understand the words as I integrate the two signals.

By the time I was a teenager, my desire to be daring and taste everything got me in trouble. Too often, I was in the company of kids my parents would call 'wild.'