In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

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.

Music has a bonding power, it's primal social cement

There is certainly a universal and unconscious propensity to impose a rhythm even when one hears a series of identical sounds at constant intervals... We tend to hear the sound of a digital clock, for example, as "tick-tock, tick-tock" - even though it is actually "tick tick, tick tick.

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

Fascinating, Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.

There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.