Autism Quotes

“He's...he's doing the same thing I do. His hands are fluttering. Like mine.
Oh God, he's like me.”
― Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

“People who are not autistic tell themselves stories. They fill in the gaps of the people they meet, often with information that isn't correct. It's why they like horror so much. It's why they get so easily scared. They see a ghost and the ghost doesn't need to do a thing. They will complete the story, they will scare themselves.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“No matter how far I've come and no matter how hard I try, beneath the mask will always be a girl who's afraid of being left behind.”
― Jackie Khalilieh, Something More

“A diagnosis is not a prediction. It doesn’t tell you what’s possible. It doesn’t change you, your colleague, your child, or your friend. It just opens up tricks and tools to thrive.”
― Jolene Stockman, Notes for Neuro Navigators: The Allies' Quick-Start Guide to Championing Neurodivergent Brains

“I’ve noticed a communication pattern among autistics, myself included—we often try to express solidarity through similarity. “I’ve been through something like that” is the most natural way for me to tell someone that I support and sympathize with them. Unfortunately, this pattern contributes to the false stereotype that autistic people lack empathy, because it can make people feel like we’re minimizing their struggles by turning the focus on ourselves. For me, though, sharing an analogous story is an expression of empathy—a tangible proof to back up my claim that I can understand how someone feels. It’s also an invitation for them to compare and contrast, telling me how their experience differs, so that I can understand them better.”
― Annie Kotowicz, What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic: Unpuzzling a Life on the Autism Spectrum

“I am against the rush to medicalize our children and young people to present as the opposite sex when they are confused or when other conditions such as autism are misattributed as trans.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“For possibly the first time in three decades, I’m not weighed down by trying to read someone’s colors and their facial expression and their body language and their tone and their words and also look out for jokes and sarcasm and flirting and secret insults and what is implied and what is left unspoken and somehow simultaneously filter out the chatter around me and the milk frother and the sensation of the chair under my bum and the movement of my fingers and position of my own feet and the breeze on my face and the sound of the doorbell ringing and the sound of my own heart and breath and the muscles in my own face.

For just a few seconds of my life I get to just be present, and it is joyful.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Alex hoped Daniel appreciated exactly how bold and daring he was being in going to the grocery store on Tuesday rather than Saturday. It was like fucking Mardi Gras over here, everything upside down.”
― Cat Sebastian, Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots

“It seems that for success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential.”
― Hans Asperger

“Aspire to become a phantom, drifting through eclectic dwellings.”
― @sherixxan

“I wear the mask of a well mannered distant relative. A young lady who crosses her legs at the ankles and laughs at banal jokes. That is a new character for me however. I have not mastered her yet. I have grasped the characters; enigmatic temporary love interest, reliable employee, my mother's aidful daughter, unobjectionable patron at a store or restaurant. In the past I learned to play shy teenage girl, tidy roommate, and diligent student through some trial and error, but those roles are behind me now, thank god.”
― Emily R. Austin, Interesting Facts about Space

“She liked to disappear. Even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Red Garden

“The autistic personality is an extreme variant of male intelligence.”
― Hans Asperger

“In the past, the number of children diagnosed was lower. The change is mostly likely due to an improved definition and a better understanding of autism; greater access to resources for parents of autistic children, leading more to seek diagnosis; and wider access to medical care.”
― Jonathan M. Berman, Anti-Vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement

“The diagnosis of autism increased from 1988 to 1999, by seven times, but the vaccination rate had remained relatively stable at about 95 percent.”
― Jonathan M. Berman, Anti-Vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement

“He begins to pull the photos, one by one, from their slots.
“My best friends,” he says softly. “My partner. Our daughter. My favorite teacher. The
neighbor who took me in and gave me home cooked meals when classes got too much. There’s
nothing more terrifying than letting your starving heart be loved, and that’s why they’re the
heaviest weight I carry.”
― S.J. Blasko, Growing Things

“Just a quick word on reasonable adjustments here - they are not a privilege, they are not intended to be annoying, or to create extra work for other people - they are a human right.”
― Luke Beardon, What Works for Autistic Adults

“My neighbors are likely not autistic. They are likely neurotypicals (NT). That means they live with the privilege of having a brain that works like 98.5% of the population”
― Joe Biel, The Autism FAQ: Everything You Wanted to Know about Diagnosis & Autistic Life

“I don't need a cure for who I am, I need you to understand me”
― Selina Wild, Inside my dark autistic mind: a poetry collection

“In a family of warmth, I was the strange, cold one- the one who could decipher textbooks and equations but struggled to decipher the exact cadence of a voice that made a name a term of endearment, not the pattern of a touch that made it a caress.”
― Carissa Broadbent, Six Scorched Roses

“She couldn’t help the hope that kindled painfully in her chest. Couldn’t help the steps she took in the wrong direction—nearer to him. Greater than any pull of gravity upon a flier, more than her duty to Soladisa, stronger than the lure of Teras to sinners, he would always be the primary force compelling her. Alive or dead, boy or monster.”
― Leanne Schwartz, To a Darker Shore

“We remain hidden, tucked away behind corporations aiming to change us, pushing supplements and instant cures into the hands of desperate parents looking to make our lives better. We're hidden behind psychiatrists who will diagnose us with anything and everything else, because they know that people have a negative view of autism. We're hidden behind an education system that dehumanizes us and makes us sure everyone else treats us like we are less than human. We're hidden behind the mask that we create ourselves to try and blend in, to not be caught.”
― Paige Layle, But Everyone Feels This Way: How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life

“Instead of looking at accommodations as a barrier, an inconvenience, see those shifts and changes as getting one step closer to all the compromises being made every minute of the day by a person with autism.”
― Carrie Rogers-Whitehead, Serving Teens and Adults on the Autism Spectrum: A Guide for Libraries

“So please make the choice to ever be noice;
A person’s a person, though some small of voice.

(The Who You Barely Knew)”
― T. William Watts

“What did he mean? What does he want me to share with him? What was the correct response? I wish people would just tell me what it is I need to say to make them happy with me instead of constantly expecting me to guess.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“What's strange is that small changes upset me immensely and always have done. A tree trimmed outside my house, the reorganization of a supermarket aisle, a new haircut, an updated app format. I cried for hours when they "new and improved" the recipe for the mashed potato I eat every Monday night.
But the big stuff?
The deaths, the tragedies, the life-changing shifts that rock everyone else to their core? That's when I'm cool, calm and collected. It's why I had to give three speeches at my own parents' funeral, and also--I'm assuming--why I heard my great-uncle Joseph call me an "empty robot" under his breath when I sat back down again.
I don't understand it, but there's just something in me that knows how to stand still when the earth shatters.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“But, on another level, there's a lot to be said for repetition, and I think I might actually understand what's going on around me for the first time in my entire life. It's not an entirely unpleasant sensation. Maybe this is how other people feel all the time; some of us just need a dress rehearsal first.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I've spent my entire life carefully regulating my environment and everything in it. Temperature. Light. Noise. Food. Textures. Routines. Rules. Emotions. People, especially when they're running in school corridors. I shape the world into one I can fit into more comfortably, and then ensure nobody touches it or messes it up.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I am no longer able to pretend that I am not the problem here. I can­not delude myself into thinking that I am the victim, the un­deserving casualty of bad romantic luck, the poor princess tied to a rock in chains against her will.

I am making the rock, over and over again; they are my chains.

Thanks to my new gift, I am literally watching myself repel my future boyfriend away from me over and over again, and it’s making me wonder just how many people I’ve done this to in my life already, without even realizing it. How many people have I repelled with the wrong word in the wrong tone at the wrong time, with a hostile or blank facial expression, an in­ability to make eye contact? How many people were supposed to be in my life before I accidentally sent them spiraling away?

And it’s this realization—that it’s my problem, and therefore one that I can solve—that snaps me out of it.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Except maybe that was the start of our failure to connect: me, failing to take the initiative. Me, being too cautious, lacking spontaneity or impulsivity. Me, reading things wrong and processing the world fifty times too slow.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse