Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.

People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever. And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world.

Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly active, and if it was not getting its usual stimulation..., it would create its own stimulation in the form of hallucinations.

Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives - we are each of us unique.

I think there is no culture in which music is not very important and central. That's why I think of us as a sort of musical species.

I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.

I rejoice when I meet gifted young people... I feel the future is in good hands.