Sharon Creech Quotes

[On being deaf:] How much less pain there is in calmly estimating the enjoyments from which we must separate ourselves, of bravely saying, for once and for ever, 'Let them go,' than in feeling them waste and dwindle, till their very shadows escape from our grasp!

I was born deaf. Sound never existed in my life, and this is completely normal to me.

Some people can't physically hear things. A kid that listens to Metallica or something can't hear that, because he's filled himself up with this stuff, he physically can't hear a banjo or a harp or something.

The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can't stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't.

As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.

I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.

I learned to speak first, and then to sign. I have never really known what it was like to hear, so I can't compare hearing aids to normal hearing.

But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't. And I'm not talking about imagining what a deaf person's whole life is like I even mean just realizing what it is like for an instant.

I have serious hearing loss. I'm challenged if I don't have my hearing aids in.

I have to concentrate more intently when people speak. I always have to position myself on their right side so that I can hear out of my left ear. I sometimes get a crick in my neck from listening. But I don't there's too much else.

Although I'm deaf in only my left ear, when there is noise all around, I'm unable to distinguish sounds and can't hear anything.

How can a man with such huge ears hear so very little?

I always say deafness is a silent disability: you can't see, and it's not life-threatening, so it has to touch your life in some way in order for it to be on your radar.

I am a visual person, given that I am deaf.

I didn't wake up one day and just couldn't hear. I woke up one day and realized I was having difficulty, and that I had overcompensated by lip reading, so that I didn't really understand how bad it was.

I am a little deaf now. Without my hearing aids in, I miss a lot of peripheral sounds. I had tinnitus, too, for a while.

Dad could speak with a strong voice. And luckily, he was very good at lip-reading, so he was able to disguise his deafness well. He tried various hearing aids but would find them fiddly and uncomfortable, and worse, they often made horrible high-pitched noises.

We're deaf men working as musicians; we play the music but we can't hear it.

Why had I taken all those useless classes like bio and German when I should have been taking lipreading?

You see, the deaf have an intimacy with silence. It’s there in their dreams.

But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone standing next to me heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life - it was only my art that held me back.

Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf.

The world's worst is when you find yourself going like Mother Hubbard and cupping your hand behind your ear. I was a major glutton for volume: 'Gotta feel it, gotta hear it.' Sooner or later you're going to pay the reaper.

[On being deaf:] We must struggle for whatever may be had, without encroaching on the comfort of others.

If the deaf are to hear the sound has to be very loud