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.

I hope I inspire people who hear. Hearing people have the ability to remove barriers that prevent deaf people from achieving their dreams.

It seems we're always in transition and that it's more about trends than it is about what's meaningful.

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.

I'm a proud person who happens to be deaf. I don't want to change it. I don't want to wake up and suddenly say, 'Oh my God, I can hear.' That's not my dream. It's not my dream. I've been raised deaf. I'm used to the way I am. I don't want to change it. Why would I ever want to change? Because I'm used to this, I'm happy.

During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother's told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn.

I'm not really deaf; I just faked it to win the Oscar KIDDING.