Wheelchair Quotes & Sayings

If we see someone in a wheelchair, we assume they cannot walk. It may be that they can walk three, four, five steps. That, to them, means they can walk. — Evelyn Glennie

Not fair? Oh, I'm sorry I get this lovely laptop computing device when all you get is the ability to walk, control your hands, and know you'll survive until your eighteenth birthday." Then the kid was going, "Uh, I didn't mean ... " But Tad wasn't done yet. While the whole class watched in horror, he put his hands through the metal support braces on the arms of his wheelchair and forced himself to stand up. Then he took a shaky little step to the side, gestured toward the chair, and said, "Why don't you take a turn with the laptop? You can even have my seat. — Jordan Sonnenblick

Hopefully, anyone who saw a woman riding a screaming mermaid in a wheelchair down Leavenworth at a quarter to five in the morning would just think they'd had too much to drink. — Seanan McGuire

Another thing about Oscar is that he wasn't afraid of anyone. And he always made up his own mind, no matter what other people said. They're two of the best things I remember about him now.
He wasn't just my friend. He was kind of magic. I can't really explain it better than that. He was honest and he was decent and he was always cheerful. And evem though his brother Stevie had to use a wheelchair, it wasn't a problem the way people usually think it is, because Oscar always made sure that every door was opened and every stairway had a ramp, and every train station had the right access so he could get it. He used to say that if the world was designed properly, the whole population would be flying around the place in wheelchairs. And when he said that, Stevie used to laugh. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Mrs. Olinski was the first teacher Epiphany ever had who taught from a wheelchair. — E.L. Konigsburg

Equipment sellers can pocket more than $2,500 every time they send a powered wheelchair to a patient and bill Medicare. — Charles Duhigg

Just because I am wheelchair-bound doesn't mean I don't get around. — Maya Angelou

Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness' sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days. — Julianna Baggott

My ideal role would be a baddie in a James Bond film. I think the wheelchair and the computer voice would fit the part. — Stephen Hawking

There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It's apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge. Especially — Jojo Moyes

There are people I would like to work with. It's a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I can't really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing. — Robert Wyatt

[He] ... watches the Joker rising from his wheelchair, the way a rabbit watches car headlights bearing down, unable to move a single, spotlit muscle. The madman's limbs appear to unlatch as though some psychotic god has chosen to give life to a complicated Swiss Army knife. The Joker's head rotates ... the green lasers of his eyes target the keys at the big man's belt, and he shakes his head. — Grant Morrison

My father had several strokes and heart attacks. I was with him when he died, and it was a horrible death. He had been a very articulate man, and to lose that, never to be able to speak properly and to be unable to move - he had always been a very vigorous man, so to be in a wheelchair and mumbling - was terrible. — Ruth Rendell

On the first day I got my wheelchair, I was also given all my clothes for the next day, a little pile on the chair. I was so proud of myself for getting it all on - the socks and everything. Dressing is a struggle, and it can take up to an hour and a half. — Michael Graves

That's right, buddy. You bought yourself a dime root beer this afternoon. You also put Carolyn Poulin back in a wheelchair. — Stephen King

I wasn't even sure why I was getting this medal, really.
No, that's not true. I knew why.
It's like people you see sometimes, and you can't imagine what it would be like to be that person, whether it's somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who can't talk. Only, I know that I'm that person to other people, maybe to every single person in that whole auditorium.
To me, though, I'm just me. An ordinary kid.
But hey, if they want to give me a medal for being me, that's okay. I'll take it. I didn't destroy a Death Star or anything like that, but I did just get through the fifth grade. And that's not easy, even if you're not me. — R.J. Palacio

Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings. — Freeman Dyson

There's no protecting anyone," Fix said, and reached over from his wheelchair to put his hand on hers. "Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves. — Ann Patchett

The only thing we have to fear is a giant wheelchair-crushing squid. Well ... uh ... actually, I guess that's the only thing I have to fear. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

You can really do amazing things in a wheelchair. It's very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, but you can even go up and down stairs in a wheelchair. — William Forsythe

Personally, I like a generous side of wheelchair access with my cities. — Stella Young

Pity? [If] you don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house! — Jerry Lewis

Here is the full list of the banned words I used: active homosexual; career women; Third World; blacks; Asians; Australasia; Bangalore; primitive African tribes; crippled; in a wheelchair; hare lip; ethnic minorities; handicapped; spinster; committed suicide; gypsies; Bombay; illegitimate daughter; air hostess; Siamese twins; Calcutta; deaf ears; illegal asylum seeker; province of Northern Ireland; grandmother; bachelor. — Rod Liddle

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. — Rick Riordan

Being in a wheelchair has made everyday things difficult. Things you wouldn't imagine. Like the looks I get at high school basketball games when they tell everyone to stand for the National Anthem. — Travis J. Dahnke

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life. — Steve Earle

Ecstatic over the total annihilation of the Earth, Dr. Strangelove "resurrects" himself, miraculously regaining his ability to walk. His mechanical, robot-like body rises out of his wheelchair, crying exultantly: "Sir! I have a plan. Heh." (He realizes he is standing up.) "Mein Fuehrer, I can walk!" — Peter Sellers

I have done all the work myself, not assistants. That's why I'm in a wheelchair: I've been doing it physically - it's hard labour - throughout my life. — Yayoi Kusama

You say that you don't care about age and that you're ready to push the wheelchair and hose down my bum, but how can you be sure? — Edmund White

The room you are about to enter," the Eagle said, setting up Nicole's wheelchair, "is the largest single room in this domain. It is half a kilometer across at its widest point. Inside currently is a model of the Milky Way Galaxy. — Arthur C. Clarke

No one wants to live in a wheelchair unable to talk, only winking once for yes and twice for no. It's perfectly reasonable that there will come a point where the balance of judgment of life over death swings the other way. — Tony Judt

The gun lobby finds waiting periods inconvenient. You have only to ask my husband how inconvenient he finds his wheelchair from time to time. — Sarah Brady

If you have it, it is for life. It is a disease for which there is no cure. You will go on riding even after they have to haul you on a comfortable wise old cob, with feet like inverted buckets and a back like a fireside chair ... when I can't ride anymore, I shall still keep horses as long as I can hobble about with a bucket and a wheelbarrow. When I can't hobble, I shall roll my wheelchair out to the fence of the field where my horses graze, and watch them. — Monica Dickens

You know, I'm just a regular guy. I mow my lawn, shovel snow from the driveway, and change the oil in our vehicles. I do the grocery shopping and cook most of our dinners. I'm like any other man in America. Only I got lucky - I have a beautiful son and an activity we can do together, despite his disability. It's been an incredible journey. I'm not a hero. I'm just a father. And all I did was tie on a pair of running shoes and push my son in his wheelchair. — Dick Hoyt

While L-dopa was vastly superior to what came before, the drug fell far short of being a cure. On the one hand, the L-dopa allowed "frozen" wheelchair-bound individuals to walk again and increased patients' life expectancy. On the other hand, virtually all patients taking levodopa were sentenced to future disabling motor complications. And that's as true today as it was in 1970. — Jon Palfreman

In the next room a freckly girl Julia's age sat in a wheelchair. One of her legs wasn't there. She'd probably love to have my stammer if she could have her leg back, and I wondered if being happy's about other people's misery. — David Mitchell

I think when I'm 80 years old, 85, hopefully, I'll be pushed around in a wheelchair by a red-headed nurse with panty outline. She'll make me little tequila sunrises and I'll read my complete works then. Then, I'll decide whether I think I've done something good or not. I'll reserve my judgment until then. — Tom Robbins

When I got home from hospital, and I was in a wheelchair in a plaster body cast, an aeroplane flew over. And I thought to myself, 'Well, if I can't walk, then I might as well fly.' And I was lifted into the aeroplane for the first time. And when I took the controls of the aeroplane, I knew this was something I could do. I thought, 'I can fly.' — Janine Shepherd

I am in touch with a company that hopes to replicate my voice. However, they are not replicating my original voice - if they did that, I would sound like a man in his 20s, which would be very strange! They are actually trying to replicate the synthesizer that sits on my wheelchair. — Stephen Hawking

She stared at the melted wheelchair, then the smoldering remains of the bouquet on the carpet. "Did I - ?" "Decide those daisies needed to die?" I finished. "Yes, you did. — Rick Riordan

She bit the inside of her cheek. "You wouldn't keep secrets from me, would you? I mean we've been friends how long?"
"We have been friends, thirteen years, eight months, two weeks, four days," The wheelchair stopped and Ari watched the long shadow look at his watch. "Sixteen hours, four minutes and forty seven seconds and counting I'd say; give or take thirty minutes. Or if you want the short version: five thousand and four days plus or minus a few hours."
She put her hands to her face and laughed to keep from crying. "Please tell me you made half of that up. Who actually keeps track of time like that? — Victoria Escobar

Jess actually dreaded having a boyfriend, because of having to tell her mum. Perhaps she would just avoid it until her mum eighty or something and in an old-people's home, and then Jess, who would by then be about fifty, would drop by and casually remark, "Oh, by the way, Mum, I've got a boyfriend." And even then her mum would probebly hurtle out of her wheelchair and smack her hard across the face, crying "You trash! You whore! Get outta my house--I mean, my room!" It was hard sometimes, being the daughter of a radical feminist who hated men. — Sue Limb

They just change. Their body changes. Their abilities - the things they do that make them who they are - leave, sometimes temporarily, sometimes forever. Every day they wake up with that big what if?
And nothing is scarier than a life filled with what ifs - living by day without predictability and control. Some people end up losing feeling. Some have uncontrollable spasms. Some can't function. Some end up blind or in a wheelchair. Some end up bedridden and paralyzed.
It's hard to know who "some people" will be. — Lindsey Leavitt

Shit! Halvorsen thought furiously, and for a moment one hand clawed under his sport-coat where there was a .38 in a clamshell holster. Then sanity reasserted itself. This was no drug bust or armed robbery; this was a crippled black lady in a wheelchair. She was rolling it like it was some punk's drag-racer, but a crippled black lady was all she was just the same. What was he going to do, shoot her? That would be great, wouldn't it? And where was she going to go? There was nothing at the end of the aisle but two dressing rooms. — Stephen King

Hoping to settle the wheelchair matter once and for all, Graham dragged his chief of construction, his chief of architecture, and a film crew out to Dulles Airport, whose escalators were approximately the same width as those planned for Metro. There he produced a variety of braces and crutches. As the cameras rolled, Graham rode up and down the escalators using one aid after another, climaxing by riding both directions in a wheelchair, facing up each time. Graham clearly believed he had proved beyond doubt that 'it is entirely possible, easily and safely, for wheelchair travelers to use escalators.' His aides watched in disbelief; a fit and fearless major general in his fifties hardly represented the disabled population, whatever braces he strapped to his legs. All he had proved, concluded the WMATA architect Sprague Thresher, was that 'if everybody who had to use a wheelchair was Jack Graham, we wouldn't need elevators. — Zachary M. Schrag

Well, I'm using a cane, so what? So what if they shot me sitting in a wheelchair? That's life! — Dick Clark

The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love. — Ram Dass

The lesson in my friend's observation is that the line moves. What had once seemed unendurable to an aged parent, and still does to us, the adult children, changes. They come to tolerate the formerly intolerable and to surprise us with their forbearance. Diapers, it turned out, were not the end of the world. Nor was a wheelchair, despite initial resistance. Millimeter by millimeter the line was moving, as it would many times more. — Jane Gross

Does moping actually help humans
feel better?"
"I'm not moping."
"Of course you're not. A girl like you,
spending time with a warrior demigod like me. What's to mope about? Leaving a
wheelchair behind couldn't possibly show up on the radar compared to that. — Susan Ee

The cost is minimal, but one of the things that you want in a universal design is to make the plan as open as you can ... and to still have walls around bedrooms and that sort of thing, and to keep the corridors wide enough so the wheelchair can do a 360 in the corridor. — Michael Graves

I'm like a man in a wheelchair watching other people run. I can see what good acting is but I can't quite reach it but I'm so close sometimes, V. I'm really trying. — Emily St. John Mandel

Check his wheelchair for anthrax and ammunition — Jojo Moyes

I don't care if what we do makes a profit; I care whether we get somebody out of a wheelchair. — Mark Noble

I'm a full-time wheelchair user. And yet, given the right circumstances, I am able to work. — Stella Young

Of fortune cookies and tarot cards they have no need: my wheelchair, burn scars, and gnarled hands apparently tell them all they need to know. My future is written on my body. — Alison Kafer

It's nice to have more than one little one because then you'll have - while one is pushing you in a wheelchair, the other one can open the doors for you. — Clyde Edgerton

While still practising law, he'd run a hearse-rental agency. Then, later, he'd bought into a handkerchief factory in Baker Park. Their most famous innovation was the funeral hankerchief, a plain white cotton handkerchief with a black border. Not long afterwards he patented the first black-edged tissue. He'd made millions, apparently, though nobody knew what he'd done with the money. His only extravagance had been to install an elevator in the house, so he could move between floors without getting out of his wheelchair.
'So what did he mean about hearing money?' Jed asked.
'It's his factory across the river. He claims he can hear the money being made. — Rupert Thomson

Schizo. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Gill compared it to a disease or physical disability, it wasn't the same thing. It just wasn't. I had schizophrenia. If I saw two guys on the sidewalk, one in a wheelchair and one talking talking to himself, which would I rush to open a door for, and which would I cross the road to avoid? — Kelley Armstrong

What sucked was that her room was on the fourth floor of a four-story house because she hated walking past every other room on her way in and out. She was like a latter-day Rapunzel except her hair was only a few inches below her shoulders, slightly fried, not all that blond, and furthermore, who the hell was ever going to climb up to give her a hand? The guy in the wheelchair from school?
What she - and Rapunzel, frankly - needed was a decent ladder. — Francine Pascal

People don't turn away from an attorney sitting in a wheelchair. If the guy has got the reputation for being the best attorney around, that's who you go with. But in show business, for some reason they're still reluctant to say an attorney or a physician or an interior decorator can be in a chair, or on crutches, or blind or any of the other things. — Gerald McRaney

This machine, the wheelchair, I can go all over the place, but you need a place without stairs to get in. — Itzhak Perlman

FDR's struggle with illness and subsequent metal-filled life are remarkably similar to the story of another great leader who was part robot: Iron Man. FDR, much like Tony Stark, was cocky and arrogant before his life-changing diagnosis, but the years of suffering changed all of that, and he emerged more humble, more fearless, and ready to defend America. Also, FDR wore iron braces and used a wheelchair, which, for the purposes of this comparison, is exactly like a well-armed robot suit. — Daniel O'Brien

The people who criticise you will not be the ones taking care of your legs when you are in your wheelchair. People who never drove a car in these conditions, they just don't know. — Alain Prost

I cleared my throat and looked up at him. "I'll just get dressed and meet you in the hall."
He nodded. "I'll have the nurse ready your chariot."
"My chariot?"
He shrugged sheepishly. "I thought that sounded better than wheelchair."
I grinned. "Totally better. — Cambria Hebert

Richard wondered how the marquis managed to make being pushed around in a wheelchair look like a romantic and swashbuckling thing to do. — Neil Gaiman

There's still so much more to do. I can't sit back and be complacent, and none of us should be. I get around now in a wheelchair, but I get around. — Elizabeth Taylor

I think that all architects, structural engineers, educators, and service personnel should have to spend a day in a wheelchair as part of training. — Juli K. Dixon

By the way, there is nothing cute about a pink wheelchair. Pink doesn't change a thing. — Sharon M. Draper

When she did walk, to the bathroom between the chairs and the customers leaning back in them, oblivious to her manoeuvres, the sight felt strangely moving and profound, like a baby, or a veteran getting out of a wheelchair, or a deer in snow. That is perhaps overdoing it. Maybe I didn't quite know that at the time, but it was striking. If you have not seen a deer in snow, I mean: moving with precision, but as if she might leap away in a completely different direction at any moment. — Olivia Sudjic

Growing up? Gavriel, that was last week watching her recover from crashing out of that office window. She fell out of her wheelchair and broke her other arm." Caspian laughed along with his mate.
Gavriel pulled the phone back and stared at it in horror. — Alanea Alder

Brian leaned in, hands braced on the edges of her wheelchair. No farmers, or I'm coming in with everything I've got to save you from your own foolishness — Ronie Kendig

When I was a child, doctors sent my grandmother home in a wheelchair to die. Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she already had so much scar tissue from bypass operations that the surgeons had essentially run out of plumbing. There was nothing more to do, they said; her life was over at 65. — Michael Greger

I don't come with the wheelchair. The wheelchair comes with me. — Max DePree

Wheelchair-accessible front ramp, take a bit of getting used to, and some like the engineer never do get comfortable with them and use the less garish auditory side-doors; and the abundant sulcus-fissures and gyrus-bulges of the slick latex roof make rain-drainage complex and footing chancy at best, so there's not a whole lot of recreational strolling up here, although a kind of safety-balcony of skull-colored polybutylene resin, which curves around the midbrain from the inferior frontal sulcus to the parietooccipital sulcus - a halo-ish ring at the level of like eaves, demanded by the Cambridge Fire Dept. over the heated pro-mimetic protests of topological Rickeyites over in the Architecture Dept. (which the M.I.T. administration, trying to placate Rickeyites and C.F.D. Fire Marshal both, had had the pre-molded resin injected with dyes to render it the distinctively icky brown-shot off-white of living skull, so that the balcony resembles at once corporeal bone and — David Foster Wallace

I can't disguise myself with a wig and dark glasses - the wheelchair gives me away. — Stephen Hawking

Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived. — Lionel Shriver

I'm not moping," I whisper back. "Of course you're not. A girl like you, spending time with a warrior demigod like me. What's to mope about? Leaving a wheelchair behind couldn't possibly show up on the radar compared to that."
"You've got to be kidding me."
"I never kid about my warrior demigod status. — Susan Ee

A man is at the bar, drunk. I pick him up off the floor, and offer to take him home. On the way to my car, he falls down three times. When I get to his house, I help him out of the car, and on the way to the front door, he falls down four more times. I ring the bell and say, Here's your husband! The man's wife says, Where's his wheelchair? — Henny Youngman

If he was paralyzed, we'd have to put in ramps and have things altered for wheelchair access; you can get kitchens refitted; bathrooms altered ... I'd get him a really fast wheelchair. It'd be OK. If he couldn't talk, I'd get him a great computer. Anything can be dealt with, everything can be overcome. Just be alive. Just, please God, I beg you, please, please keep him alive for me. — Mindy Hammond

What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms. — Thomas Sowell

I hold the door to the post office open for a weathered man in a wheelchair. He is gracious, thanking me. One leg is missing, and just as I notice this, I see the sticker on the back of his chair: VIETNAM VETS.

My thoughts jumble as an ache brews in my heart. I think of war and how it destroys, divides, and damages. I see the faces of those in the refugee camp and those who found their names on The List and are now in America. I want to tell this wounded soldier that I am sorry for his loss and for the abandonment he may have felt upon his return. I want to say other things, but right now I'm just honored to hold the door for him. — Alice J. Wisler

I learn so much that I previously did not know about the world of the immobile that it is hard to believe it all takes place over a few hours. At random: I learn about the casual indifference of the London cabbie to the wheelchair user and that the clearance on accessible entrances is measured in millimetres less than a knuckle. I learn how intractable it is to push a grown man around for hours and how spontaneity is the privilege of the able-bodied. In solid counterpart to all this grief, I learn about the lengths nurses are prepared to go to assist a purely recreational and ambitious project by one of their patients. — Marion Coutts

Can you stand on your legs?" Sydelle Pulaski asked. "Can you walk at all?"
People never asked Chris those questions; they whispered them to his parents behind his back. "N-n-no. Why?"
"What better disguise for a thief or a murderer than a wheelchair, the perfect alibi."
Chris enjoyed being taken for the criminal type. Now they really were friends. — Ellen Raskin

I was stuck in a wheelchair playing this deranged villain. I felt this mass amount of rage at being so confined. I thought, 'What can I do that is the direct opposite of this situation?' The only thing I could think of was that I could sing and dance. — Kenneth Branagh

Should you happen to notice that another person is extremely tall or overweight, eats too much or declines convivial drinks, has red hair or goes about in a wheelchair, ought to get married or ought not to be pregnant
see if you can refrain from bringing these astonishing observations to that person's attention. — Judith Martin

Using MRI scans, scientists can now read thoughts circulating in our brains. Scientists can also insert a chip into the brain of a patient who is totally paralyzed and connect it to a computer, so that through thought alone that patient can surf the web, read and write e-mails, play video games, control their wheelchair, operate household appliances, and manipulate mechanical arms. In fact, such patients can do anything a normal person can do via a computer. — Michio Kaku

How inappropriate,' Lila said coldly. 'Who'd ever dream of showing up at a dance in a wheelchair? What does she think she's going to do all night? — Francine Pascal

I am normal. I belong. I have a friend who can kick ass from a wheelchair. I live independently and get good grades. I'm an excellent lover.
Like I said. I'm awesome. I'm Emmet David Washington. Train Man. The best autistic Blues Brother on the block. — Heidi Cullinan

The battle to find a workplace that's wheelchair accessible is a feat in itself, let alone an employer who's going to be cool about employing someone with a disability in a job you actually want to do. — Stella Young

The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of the world, and I see - this, all this, is what the French call d'un beau affreux, what the Germans call hubsch-hasslich - the ugly-beautiful. That which is perceived as ugly transfigures into beautiful. What the postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin expressed as 'Le laid peut etre beau' - The ugly can be beautiful. The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace. — Ann Voskamp

He also said that if anyone did anything to mess up the rest of the testing, he was going to call 911 personally.
Yeah, like that wouldn't make it into the nightly news again: WHEELCHAIR-BOUND CANCER PATIENT ARRESTED FOR FREE SPEECH. — Jordan Sonnenblick

They see me wheeling around in a beautiful gown, and they realize you can look elegant, and you can lead a happy life in a wheelchair. I know I've helped handicapped people, because I've received many comments. — Anna Lee

I don't want my husband to push me around in a wheelchair. I don't want someone to lead me around because I'm blind. — Della Reese

It's like people you see sometimes, and you can't imagine what it would be like to be that person, whether it's somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who can't talk. Only, I know that I'm that person to other people, maybe to every single person in that whole auditorium.
To me, though, I'm just me. An ordinary kid. — R.J. Palacio

The medicalized version of mortality, though, insists that you get into a wheelchair when you are in a hospital. — Anonymous

For me, the wheelchair symbolizes disability in a way a cane does not. — Annette Funicello

My dad gave me my first bike at 16. I soon fell off and was in a wheelchair for weeks. I haven't fallen since. — Hugh Laurie

Rashid was crushed in his wheelchair when one of Israel's huge US-supplied bulldozers demolished his home with the family inside. Thanks to prevailing moral standards, such acts are also excluded from the canon of terrorism (or worse, war crimes), by virtue of wrong agency.3 — Noam Chomsky

There's the paradox of making pop music when you're in your 50s. People weren't meant to be doing that originally and yet they are. Mick Jagger [used to say] we're not going to be doing Satisfaction when I'm in a wheelchair. — Neil Tennant

It was a morning for Ella Fitzgerald. There are fine things in the world, after all. Dignity, refinement, warmth and humour, where you'd never expect to find them. Even as an old woman, an amputee in a wheelchair, Ella sang like a girl who could still be at high school, falling in love for the first time. — David Mitchell