Autism Quotes

“I was continually over-identifying with fiction to try and find a template for myself and my story (143)”
― Fern Brady, Strong Female Character

“There are billions of us -- humans everywhere, with access to our own minds and no one else's, tossing one another songs and sentences to bridge the gap.”
― Annie Kotowicz, What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic: Unpuzzling a Life on the Autism Spectrum

“By the time I entered education in the late 1980s, schools were about as well adapted for my neurotype as a set of stairs is adapted for the use by a Dalek.”
― Pete Wharmby, Untypical: How the World Isn’t Built for Autistic People and What We Should All Do About it

“Couples that stim together stay together.”
― Mazey Eddings, Tilly in Technicolor

“When Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling published the piece "TERF Wars" on her blog in the summer of 2020, she specifically mentioned her fear that many transgender men are actually Autistic girls who weren't conventionally feminine, and have been influenced by transactivists on the internet into identifying out of womanhood. In presenting herself as defending disabled "girls," she argued for restricting young trans Autistic people's ability to self-identity and access necessary services and health care.
Rowling's perspective (which she shares with many gender critical folks) is deeply dehumanising to both the trans and Autistic communities.”
― Devon Price, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

“Our identities make us who we are, and all aspects of our identities are important, including (maybe even specifically) our disabilities.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“My ears work. My brain understands. Can't you see I am a REAL PERSON?”
― Carol Cujec, Real

“Racism has permeated psychology and psychiatry from its genesis. Early clinicians came from white, European backgrounds, and used their culture's social norms as the basis for what being healthy looked like. It was a very narrow and oppressive definition, which assumed that being genteel, well-dressed, well-read, and white were the marks of humanity, and that anyone who deviated from that standard was not a person, but an animal in need of being tamed.”
― Devon Price, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

“It's not always possible (or helpful) to try to untangle which of a person's traits are Autistic and which are caused by the trauma of being neurodiverse in a neurotypical world.”
― Devon Price, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

“I am not good enough at organizing to be an actual activist. But searching for connections between the big picture and the little picture, however, is a very ASD thing to do. I am never not cross-referencing the trees with the forests, and it can be a very exhausting way to engage, but I wouldn't change it for the world, because I believe communities need thinkers like me.”
― Hannah Gadsby, Ten Steps to Nanette

“He smiles a little, reflexively. He never actually feels like smiling, but he has survived by the skillful mimicry of expressions for too long to stop doing it now.”
― N.K. Jemisin, Shades in Shadow

“I needed to keep my watch on because I needed to know exactly what time it was. And when they tried to take it off me I screamed, so they let me keep it on.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

“Humans are biased machines, and we are especially influenced by negatives. We want to believe the worst about ourselves and will pick those scraps up throughout the day and piece them together until we have something that we can look at and say, 'Look, arent I terrible' even if everyone else says otherwise. Maybe that's just me.”
― Charlotte Amelia Poe, How to Be Autistic

“It feels like we’re living in a time where neurodivergence is more broadly understood, or even accepted – with people, learning about the ways conditions like Autism and ADHD have historically been underdiagnosed, or underreported, especially in women.”
― Ameema Saeed

“It's okay, we got out the other side alive, didn't we? It took twenty years to get there, but we did it.”
― Charlotte Amelia Poe

“What has caused much strife in the autism community is the claim by some autistic self-advocates that they speak for the entire spectrum, even those whose profound cognitive impairments preclude self-advocacy.”
― Amy Lutz

“Everything I read was about us, not by us.”
― Lizzie Huxley-Jones, Being an Ally

“I don’t want somebody who’s going to talk about me like I’m not here, or say things about one person when they really mean it about another person, or, or—”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Awakened Kingdom

“Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom.”
― Richard Powers, Bewilderment

“The autism employment efforts of recent years have tapped into an enormous wellspring of energy and desire to work among adults with autism, family members, and advocates. The post pandemic efforts will similarly need this participation.”
― Michael Bernick, The Autism Full Employment Act: The Next Stage of Jobs for Adults with Autism, ADHD, and Other Learning and Mental Health Differences

“The best way I can think to describe it is that there's a beehive in my chest, and most people upset the bees”
― Elizabeth Little, Pretty as a Picture

“Mi ritroverò accerchiato da persone che si chiedono a vicenda perché me ne stia in un angolo senza rivolgere parola a nessuno. Io mi sto divertendo ad ascoltare musica, anche se non è la stessa che sento quando sono solo; non è male stare accanto a persone nuove, è solo stancante. Ma il mio viso non si piega per dimostrarlo e le persone non mi credono quando dico la verità.”
― Nora Cenere, La costellazione del cane

“When you’re autistic, from birth you’re told that there’s something ‘wrong’ with you, even if nobody is quite sure what it is. I’ve spent most of my life feeling ‘broken’: as if my way of thinking and feeling and speaking and simply experiencing the world is abnormal, and should be hidden as much as possible if I want to be accepted. Finding a way to love yourself when others don’t is incredibly difficult, because we all tend to define our sense of ‘self’ through what we’re told by others: by society in general, by our peers, by the media, by the art we consume. It’s hard to stand against the world and be yourself.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“So no, We are not unfeeling monsters. We feel just as much, if not more, than you.”
― Charlotte Amelia Poe

“A common source of disappointment and frustration for parents is the letdown that happens soon after diagnosis. Parents seek diagnostic evaluations both to better understand their child and also to have that child be eligile for services. Many, if not most, parents are not aware that it can take months to find and secure these resources and to get an actual appointment. Additionally, the cost of these services is often far greater than anticipated.
One parent, who participated in in-depth interviews by researchers interested in the partnership between parents and providers, had this to say, "It felt like you were being taken to the edge of a cliff. You've been given the diagnosis, you got shoved off the end, and then it was, 'Oh by the way, we haven't got the parachute. You'll need to get that for yourself.' You feel like you finally got there, and you're quite happy, you're ready to fly - but then all the sudden you don't have the rest of the equipment you need to fly with.”
― temple grandin, Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets For Helping Kids on the Spectrum

“Every evening the duo gradually elevated themselves from the podium, dismissing gravity.”
― Marin ., Art

“It's meaningless to question whether a trans Autistic person would have "still" been trans had they not been born neurodiverse, because Autism is such a core part of who we are. Without our disability (or our gender identity) we'd be entirely different people. There is no separating these aspects of ourselves from our personhood or personality. They're both core parts.”
― Devon Price, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

“Choosing your own mask was the first voluntary human act. And solitary… your head could sometimes hold itself high like the head of someone who has overcome an obstacle: the person was.”
― Clarice Lispector

“[...] The hope is that research can find ways to improve a faulty social brain. There is already evidence that practice can help people overcome at least some of the motor deficits I've just described. Remember Temple Grandin, the autistic woman who learned how to approach people properly, without bowling them over, by walking through a supermarket's automatic doors over and over until she got the steps down? She overcame a social problem that was really a motor problem. [...]”
― John J. Ratey, A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain

“Don't look for happiness, create it.”
― Penny Dodson, Santa Goes Surfing