Gabrielle Giffords Quotes

Last year I had a stroke. It left me in bad shape. I had to teach myself how to walk and talk all over again. It was a long hard fight. My speech is not perfect but I'm getting there.

Tally wondered if you could talk somebody out of their brain damage.

I damaged all the complicated bits of the brain to do with processing and emotional control. I was prey to every single emotion that swept over me and I couldn't deal with it. I had to re-learn things from scratch.

My daughter couldn't wake me up, so they called 911. They rushed me to the hospital. They drilled a hole in my head and wrapped a coil around my brain. I was unconscious for a week, and I was in rehab for two months - couldn't walk, couldn't talk. Now I've relearned everything. I'm so happy.

I had to learn to walk again, talk again, think again.

I lost the power to write and I had to sort of relearn how to read and write to a certain extent and speak fluently.

I blinked and I cured my brain.

It astonishes me already when I compare my condition today with what it was a month ago. Before that I knew well enough one could fracture one's legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.

I couldn't listen to music with lyrics for the first few months after the brain surgery, because they were too complex and disturbing. So I listened to a lot of classical music. I didn't really want to read, either, so I listened to books on tape or watched movies. I also re-taught myself all of my childhood piano pieces. It helped me repair my brain.

The human brain is a wonderful organ. It starts to work as soon as you are born and doesn't stop until you get up to deliver a speech.

What music does to me, it helps me balance my inner pressure so that I can deal with the forces outside that are trying to pressure me.

Fifteen years ago, I suffered a stroke, which caused me to lose my speech. Now, what does an actor who can't talk do? Wait for silent pictures to come back? I work with a speech therapist twice a week.

It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.

If someone is sad, they put on a song, or if someone wants to rock out, and they want to get into a good mood, they put on music. Just being able to be a part of something like that I feel like was my ultimate push to do music.

People who have had a stroke and are recovering from it love being read to... especially by someone who is a good reader - it does help them to get better.

And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.

The human brain can soften as a result of incessant listening to music with an intent to commit prose.

Live music is healthy.

Everyone goes through the ups and downs of living - fretting about the future, worrying about what happened. Music teaches us how to be in the moment.

Music drives you. It wakes you up, it gets you pumping. And, at the end of the day, the correct tune will chill you down.

Music is the most powerful thing on this earth, and it's hard to be angry when you are listening to music.

When I'm feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, sometimes I'll read a book. But most of the time, I will either listen to music or play music. I'm basically always playing music, even if I'm not stressed!

There are still so many questions to answer about the workings of the human body and, most mysterious of all, it is influenced by our state of mind.

Painful events leave scars, true, but it turns out they're largely erasable. Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroanatomist who had a stroke that obliterated her memory, described the event as losing '37 years of emotional baggage.'

All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.