Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Masur

Masur is drawing a hard line against the cozy fantasy of empathy as method acting. The verb “project” is doing most of the work: it’s the language of performance, of imagination-as-transportation, and he’s calling it out as a category error. Deafness isn’t a costume you can slip on for a scene, or a thought experiment you can complete in the span of a well-meaning minute. By insisting “you can’t,” he’s refusing the audience’s favorite shortcut: the belief that if you picture it vividly enough, you’ve earned understanding.

The really sharp move is how he narrows the claim. He’s not even policing the big, sweeping “what a deaf person’s whole life is like” story. He’s saying you can’t even “realize what it is like for an instant.” That’s a rebuke to the quick empathy hit we often chase: the sudden, cinematic flash of insight that lets non-disabled people feel enlightened without doing the slower work of listening, learning, and changing behavior. The subtext is moral and political: if you treat deafness as an exercise in imagination, you’ll center your feelings and miss the actual person.

Coming from an actor, the comment also reads like an insider’s critique of representation. Performance culture rewards the illusion of access - “I became the character.” Masur is pointing out where that breaks down, and why it matters: disability isn’t just interior sensation, it’s language, community, technology, and constant negotiation with a world built for someone else. His intent isn’t to ban empathy; it’s to stop people from mistaking empathy for expertise.