A Loss for Words Quotes

“The inability to hear is a nuisance; the inability to communicate is the tragedy.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“It is a curious societal comment that the major agencies in New York serving the blind were on the genteel upper East Side or on tree-lined streets in Chelsea. The Society for the Deaf was in a place the police had forsaken.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“Every day they met with constant, irritating reminders of their shortcomings, from the petty annoyance of not being able to ask for a cup of coffee in a restaurant, to the sobering knowledge that they couldn’t hear cars careening around corners, and that deaf people had been shot in the back by policemen when they hadn’t heard a command to halt.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“For so long I’d been doing what I’d accused other people of doing—I was seeing the deafness, not the people.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“Less and less we were freaks. More and more we were curiosities.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“It was slowly dawning on me that innocence is a protection. They knew very well, better than I, how harsh the world is. And they realized early on they had one of two choices: to be bitter; or to enjoy what they had.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“I had to learn I wasn’t deaf. I had to start speaking out.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“My greatest fear had always been: The more you get to know me, the less there is to know.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“I have heard and hidden the insults so long, I have been the conduit so long that I am disappearing!”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“I have talked and listened and heard and there is no me!”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“This was insanity. This was coming out of my mouth and it was madness.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“The only way Tyrone had of communicating was to hit someone.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“From 1963 through 1965, a nationwide epidemic of rubella—German measles—caused thousands of women to deliver babies who were handicapped in some way:”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“So much had been lost.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“Mom turned to me, puzzled. In sign language, she asked, “What was Grandpa saying in the kitchen?” My heart froze.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“By the time we got back to his house, Grandpa couldn’t reproduce the two signs he’d learned, but he hurried inside to describe to my grandmother how he’d tried.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“Tell Doris Jean I figure it’s about time I learned that sign language,”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“Interestingly, very few deaf people actually use sign language in their dreams.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“In most of us there is a tiny voice we consult as part of our thought processes. Deaf people literally don’t hear themselves thinking.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“What’s interesting about the studies is that prelingually deaf people (people such as my parents, who were born deaf or who lost their hearing early on) have no interior monologue.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“no one had ever let them think that initiative was acceptable behavior.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“In fact, an alarming percentage of deaf children graduate high school with a third-grade reading ability.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“One of the criticisms leveled at deaf people is that they’re rigid thinkers. For”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“Thomas Hansen, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Hinckley, carried a gun in the trunk of his car, and wrote letters to one of the stars of the musical Annie, pleading with the girl to return his love, warning her to stop drinking (he’d seen a newspaper photo of her next to a bottle of champagne, celebrating her eighteenth birthday), and informing her that he would commit suicide if she didn’t permit him to visit. Hansen had been tracking the girl for six years—since the time she was twelve—following her across the United States.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“I told him as much as I was allowed to tell, but the Code of Ethics forbids evaluating a person’s signing skills for hearing people, or making judgments about a deaf person’s intellect.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“This work was throwing me into the intimate functioning of people’s lives.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“Children of defectives often feel guilt.” These words seared into my brain.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“If the students didn’t understand the charade, I’d turn and write on the blackboard, but I tried to avoid even that. I didn’t want the students automatically translating everything from sign to English—that slowed the process.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“From the first two-hour class on, I had not said a word. I wanted them to know a little bit of what it is like to be deaf: lost, confused, unable to communicate.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

“But thinking back on all those times, I had this odd, inescapable feeling that society thought it was some kind of sin to be deaf.”
― Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family