Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well

The power of music and the plasticity of the brain go together very strikingly, especially in young people.

there are other senses -­ secret senses, sixth senses, if you will -­ equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded.

I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.

I had never thought about what it might mean to be deaf, to be deprived of language, or to have a remarkable language (and community and culture) of one’s own. Up to this point, I had mostly thought and written about the problems of individuals–here I was to encounter an entire community.

And so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: ‘A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, and see a profound change.’ Memory, mental activity, mind alone, could not hold him; but moral attention and action could hold him completely.

The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds - for the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual, are absolutely, the strongest in our being: stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease.