I was 21 years and 218 days old when I received the Academy Award for Best Actress. I had just stepped into an imaginary world that I'd seen at a distance for years.

Differences are scarier now. The dollar isn't so guaranteed if you don't follow what they see as the norm. But I don't moan about it. I just keep working.

The handicap of deafness is not in the ear; it is in the mind.

I'm gonna be unemployed when people read this. Ha.

Hollywood embraced me in the late '80s because there was a good project I was in and it was different. Nowadays, it's about corporate mentality, box office, youth.

When you're up for an award at the Oscars, try as you might, it's hard to concentrate on the show.

It was ability that mattered, not disability, which is a word I'm not crazy about using.