Paul Raci

“I grew up at Second City in Chicago.”

“I started professionally acting in '80.”

“What I'm going to make sure happens, if I have anything to say about it, now that people are listening - we need to see more protagonists that just happen to be deaf. There are great actors out there. If you're going to have a deaf character, then it should be authentically portrayed with a deaf actor.”

“This is why every actor wants to get a script - they want to see what the arc of the character is.”

“My father was deafened at the age of six months from spinal meningitis, so he never knew sound at all.”

“You have to go to the gym; you have to learn how to swim. The craft of acting is learning the lines and everything, however, if you jump into the river and you drown, whose fault is that? It's not the river's fault. You've got to learn your craft before you jump in that river.”

“I'm so grateful to Riz Ahmed for being so brilliantly heartbreaking for me to deal with him on screen, on set. He gave me everything I needed.”

“I had so many deaf uncles that instilled in me this feeling of unconditional love, that's how I was brought up in that community. Then when I moved to Los Angeles, I met this deaf community, and they accepted me whole-heartedly.”

“During my 40-something-year acting career, I have always been about the work.”

“I went to Vietnam. When I got back, it wasn't pretty.”

“Hearing people say, 'How can these deaf people understand the show when they come to a rock club?' They're up there, at the front of the stage, and they're feeling the vibrations.”

“I knew early on that acting was cathartic. It was powerful.”

“A lot of what my parents went through, their history, lives in my body. I'm just a witness to what my father and mother's lives were like, growing up in the Chicago deaf community.”

“As a little boy it angered me to see my dad with no chance of moving up. He'd come home, slump-shouldered with the Chicago Tribune under his arm after a long day working menial jobs to support his family. He had no way, no clear path to get ahead in this world. He never had a shot, never had a chance.”

“I don't have an alarm clock. I have a head clock.”

“I got drafted and enlisted in the Navy.”

“My father died a happy, peaceful man.”

“You throw all these obstacles in front of people, especially a lot of the deaf people that I've known in my life, you throw an obstacle in front of them and they brush it away and just keep on moving.”

“Thank God for Deaf West Theater - if it wasn't for them, where the hell else was I going to exercise my acting chops? I had nothing. But you go from gig to gig and hope that something's going to happen.”

“I'm so blessed that the garden I'm able to pull from, the actor's garden, is as rich as it is.”