Paul Raci

“Everybody in Los Angeles is an actor, or they think they are, or they want to be. They're looking for that shot. And the way the system is here - that monster, that beast - it thrives on names and recognition. And the bottom line is the dollar.”

“I went into Vietnam as a young man like John Wayne, because that's what my grandfather told me to do. But after my four year experience in the war, I came out as Lenny Bruce.”

“My dad, being stone deaf, had a lot of balance problems, especially at night, and walking up stairs was like a perilous journey.”

“My dad felt oppressed by the hearing man. All his friends would express to me sometimes how oppressive their own country was and how they had to speak a foreign language in their own country constantly because nothing was captioned.”

“I wanted to be an inspiration to anybody. I really do.”

“American Sign Language is my native tongue. That's the first thing that I learned to communicate with.”

“Rock 'n' roll has always had that devil-may-care, 'We're young! We're indestructible.' I felt that way. Everybody feels that way. But I think it is just my job as an elder statesman of rock 'n' roll, if you will, 'Dude! Protect your ears!' Because you want to keep using this precious sense that you have.”

“When I grew up in the '50s, people were called 'hearing-impaired.' And then the consciousness of the community shifted: 'I'm not hearing-impaired. I'm deaf. Call me what I am.'”

“When I was a kid in Chicago, it was looked upon as something that you had to fix - that you were broken. If you're hearing-impaired, you're broken. Or if you're deaf, there's something wrong with you.”

“Culturally deaf people don't want to be fixed. They don't feel impaired. They feel complete.”

“The Deaf population is not a monolith. It's so layered, so complicated. It's happy, it's sad, it's angry. The gamut of human emotion, amplified.”

“Deaf culture, with a capital D, is just a whole world unto itself. When I was growing up, it was the Deaf world and the hearing world. The connection between the two did not exist.”

“I've got a grateful heart and I'm excited as hell for the future.”

“We all know in the deaf community, there are deaf actors, men and women who are highly, highly skilled, highly intuitive, highly intelligent, that are not given a chance for many reasons.”

“My mother and father put down some earnest money on a house on the north side of Chicago. I don't remember the details, but it got all messed up and we had to go back to that house and get that money back. I had to do that negotiation... It's not a situation that children should be put into.”

“When I graduated from the University of Illinois, I sat down with my acting teacher, Bill Raffeld. I go, 'Bill, what's next for me?' I'm all excited. And he says, 'Paul, I don't think you're going to have any success until you're much older.' I said, 'Nobody wants to hear that! What are you talking about?'”

“Your body is speaking all the time even if you don't say anything. Not only is your face screaming what you're thinking, but so is your body.”

“I learned English second, as a secondary language.”

“Most of the deaf people I know are proud to be deaf, and whole and complete.”

“To anybody who considers themself a struggling actor, which is every single guy out here writing their own screenplay, don't give up. Just do the thing that's in front of you and keep on going. Don't give up.”