I've seen the needless struggles that deaf children and deaf people face, and that gave me the impetus to write.
One of the reasons I wanted to teach deaf children was because it made me very sad that they spoke so clumsily and that they moved with less grace that I knew was possible of deaf people.
Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I'm tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold.
I think the deafness affects me more than I realise; I think it makes me more tired. I loathe parties. I attend, smile and leave.
Throughout my scientific career, my wife has been my most constant collaborator. Her experimental skill made major contributions to the work; she has eased for me beyond measure the difficulties of communication that accompany deafness; her encouragement and fortitude have been my strongest supports.
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Look, you're here to see me, and I can't go on until my dealer is here, and he's waiting to be paid, so give me some money so I can fix up, and then you'll get your show.
My mother was the influence on me - my father was absent. He was a diamond dealer; he was doing wonderful things in the background, and women were left at home. So my mother really was in charge of everything: the ballet, dance lessons, piano lessons, and latkes.
In 2010, when the Lotus Sutra was made available to me by a private dealer, I was very fortunate to be able to have it. It is very long, 30 feet or something crazy like that. It has some 15,000 very small standard script characters that the artist Zhao Mengfu in the Yuan dynasty made when he was in his 60s.
The drug dealers, they sympathize with me. They see me as some sort of pathetic character.
I come from a family of scrap metal dealers, so becoming an actor seemed like a ridiculous thing to do, but I'd found the thing that gave me a kick, and I quickly became obsessed with it.
You make mistakes, but I don't have any regrets. I'm the kind of person who takes responsibility for it and deals with it. I learn from everything I do. I work very hard, I have so many things going on in my life. Get to know me and see who I am.
I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.
Bill Clinton fascinates me because, at the time, it seemed like his shenanigans and the people after him were the biggest political stories you could ever imagine. I remember when the 'Starr Report' was published in the newspaper, all of us were reading it in the high-school cafeteria, and a dean started taking the newspapers away from us.
I don't drink any more than the man next to me, and the man next to me is Dean Martin.
The original Dean Martin Comedy Hour handed me some hysterical sketches. I've got highlights on tons of these variety shows, given to me by their great writers. I'd love to be doing all that again.
When people ask me if Dean Martin drank, let me put it this way. If Dracula bit Dean in the neck, he'd get a Bloody Mary.
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
No, I did night clubs right here in Los Angeles. My partner, Phil Erickson, put me in the business, a guy from my home town, a dear friend who we just lost a couple of months ago.
My Mickey Mouse ears were given to me by a dear friend. They remind me of how I need to be silly.
