Paul Raci Quotes

Paul Raci

Profession : Actor

Birth : April 7, 1948

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

Paul Raci

Having deaf parents shaped my whole life because back in the day there was no technology that could help them.

Paul Raci

It was all about doing theater in Chicago, and I still do some out here in Los Angeles. But there's a difference - acting is a craft, and Chicago is where I learned that craft.

Paul Raci

It's a different world in Los Angeles because people approach acting in different ways; it's all about movies and TV, and I was all about the theater.

Paul Raci

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.

Paul Raci

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.

Paul Raci

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.

Paul Raci

My mother lost her hearing at the age of five years old, from spinal meningitis.

Paul Raci

I love going back to those silent films because my father who is totally deaf loved Buster Keaton. Loved him! More than Charlie Chaplin. He loved the pathos in his face. My father just loved that man.

Paul Raci

I got drafted and enlisted in the Navy.

Paul Raci

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.

Paul Raci

My father died a happy, peaceful man.

Paul Raci

I worked in many deaf ministries.

Paul Raci

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.

Paul Raci

I grew up in the Chicago Club of the Deaf. The Santa Claus I knew was a deaf Santa.

Paul Raci

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

Paul Raci

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

Paul Raci

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

Paul Raci

I've always been a sign language interpreter in the court system, and running out to do an audition so I could do one line in a movie or two lines in a TV show, or get ready to do full-length play like 'Of Mice and Men' at Deaf West Theatre.

Paul Raci

My mother, when I was doing stage acting in Chicago, would come to see any show that I was in. There was no access to communication. There was no sign language interpreting, but she'd just sit there in the front row and just try and read lips of every character on the play that I was doing.

Paul Raci