Autistic Author Quotes

“When you see an object, it seems that you see it as an entire thing first, and only afterwards do its details follow on. But for people with autism, the details jump straight out at us first of all, and then only gradually, detail by detail, does the whole image float up into focus.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Do not fear people with Autism, embrace them, Do not spite people with Autism unite them, Do not deny people with Autism accept them for then their abilities will shine”
― Paul Isaacs

“Q25 What's the reason you jump?
When I'm jumping it's as if my feelings are going upward to the sky. Really, my urge to be swallowed up by the sky is enough to make my heart quiver. When I'm jumping, I can feel my body parts really well, too--my bounding legs and my clapping hands--and that makes me feel so, so good.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“But I ask you, those of you who are with us all day, not to stress yourselves out because of us. When you do this, it feels as if you're denying any value at all that our lives may have--and that saps the spirit we need to soldier on. The hardest ordeal for us is the idea that we are causing grief for other people. We can put up with our own hardships okay, but the thought that our lives are the source of other people's unhappiness, that's plain unbearable.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Normal people think we're highly dependent and can't live without ongoing support, but in fact there are times when we're stoic heroes.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Many people accuse me of “not looking autistic”. I have no idea what that means. I know lots of ‘autistics’ and we all look different. We are not some recognisable breed. We are human beings. If we’re not out of the ordinary, it’s because we’re fighting to hide our real selves”
― Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist

“Waiting or pausing takes enormous skill and practice. However it is a skill that for you has become an essential way of being in the world without being so overwhelmed by it. Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, went even further when he famously said, 'Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response likes our growth and our freedom.'

Waiting in the Light enables you to create a space for grace.”
― Christopher Goodchild, Unclouded by Longing

“Many of the haters call me mental, which, by the way, is quite true, both metaphorically and clinically. It's true clinically because I am a person on the spectrum with OCD, and metaphorically, because I refuse to accept the sanity of unaccountability as the right way of civilized life. I am not going to glorify the issues of mental illness by saying that it's a super power or that it makes a person special. On the contrary, it makes things extremely difficult for a person.

But guess what! Indifference is far more dangerous than any mental illness. Because mental illness can be managed with treatment, but there is no treatment for indifference, there is no treatment for coldness, there is no treatment for apathy. So, let everyone hear it, and hear it well - in a world where indifference is deemed as sanity what's needed is a whole lot of mentalness, a whole lot of insanity, insanity for justice, insanity for equality, insanity for establishing the fundamental rights of life and living for each and every human being, no matter who they are, what they are, or where they are.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather

“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

“Today you tend to the flower of autism in your interior garden with love. You celebrate, rather than hide away in shame, your idiosyncratic ways and behaviours, and whilst there are many different kinds of wild and colourful flowers here, few have not been touched by the fragrance of autism.”
― Christopher Goodchild, Unclouded by Longing

“I believe that disclosure represents a particular kind of inventional site within autism land. Because autism, in the cultural imagination, is an ambiguous and often mystery-laden construct, any disclosure around autism invokes questions, invokes guesswork, incites demands for particularity. One cannot claim autism without being pressed for more -- more information, more cross-examination, more refutation, more response, more words flowing from more mouths.

But there is likewise a problem of ethos (or kakoethos, to quote Jenell Johnson) inherent in these disclosures, wherein autistic people are figured as lacking authority to speak on or from within autism. Autistic academic Dinah Murray laments these figurations of autism and ethos, noting, "Disclosure of an autism spectrum diagnosis means disclosure of the fundamentally flawed personhood implied by [autism's] diagnostic criteria. It is likely to precipitate a negative judgment of capacity involving permanent loss of credibility."

In disclosing autism, we are both too autistic and not autistic enough...”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“Echophenomena, such as autistic echoing of phrases, are largely considered involuntary, even if such echoing is done voluntarily. (Such are the paradoxes of compliance.) Conversely, imitation, such as complying with a behavioral analyst's demand to mirror her jumping body, is regarded as voluntary, even if it is coerced or scripted.”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“The autistic form of life does not conform to assumed social normativity and does not easily extend outward into the social, leading to a 'double empathy problem' between people of diverse dispositions, that is, both parties struggle to understand and relate to one another. Such differences in presentation can lead to dyspathic reactions and stigma, often leading to ill-fated attempts at normalisation and a continuing vicious cycle of psycho-emotional disablement.”
― Damian Milton, A Mismatch of Salience

“Rather than lacking a theory of mind, it is argued here that due to differences in the way autistic people process info, they are not socialised into the same shared ethno as neurotypical people, and thus breaches in understanding happen all the time, leaving both in a state of confusion. The difference is that the neurotypical person can repair the breach, by the reassuring belief that ~99 out of 100 people still think and act like they do, and remind themselves that they are the normal ones.”
― Damian Milton, A Mismatch of Salience

“The one blanket statement that I can make about autism is that there is no blanket statement to be made about autism.”
― Jory Fleming, How to Be Human: An Autistic Man's Guide to Life

“I have autism”
― Helen Keller, Amazing Women

“It means I'm trusting and literal and I've been underestimated and misunderstood more than my pride would like me to admit. And it also means that I'm a creative and a daydreamer, an artistically expressive person who pours herself into her passions and loves fiercely—the causes and people close to my heart—and does none of that by half-measures.”
― Chloe Liese, The Mistletoe Motive

“That’s very trusting.” Iris watches Anke search our backpacks.
“We’re saving people’s lives. We thought we could be,”Anke says. I’m more fixated on her arm in my backpack than on what she’s saying, though. That bag is nearly empty, but it’s mine. She’s messing it up. Her hands might not even be clean.
When she does stop, I immediately wish she hadn’t. “Denise,” she says, “I need to search your bed next.”
My gaze flicks to my pillow. “I. I. Could I.”
“She doesn’t like people touching her bed.” Iris stands, guarding me.
“You’re touching it,” Captain Van Zand’s brother says.
Iris shoots him a withering look. “I sat at the foot, which is the only place that’s OK for even me to touch, and I’m her sister.”
Anke’s sigh sounds closer to a hiss. “Look, we have more rooms to search.”
I squirm. No. Not squirm. I’m rocking. Back and forth. “Wait,” I say.
“You can’t—” Iris goes on.
“Just ’cause she’s too precious to—” the man argues.
“Wait,” I repeat, softer this time, so soft that I’m not even sure Iris hears it. “Can I, can I just, wait. I can lift the sheets and mattress myself. You can look. Right? Is that good? Right? Is that good? If I lift them?” I force my jaw shut.
No one says anything for several moments. I can’t tell if Anke is thinking of a counterargument or if she really is trying to make this work. Her lips tighten. “OK. If you listen to my instructions exactly.”
“You’re indulging her?” Captain Van Zand’s brother says. “She’s just being difficult. Have you ever seen an autistic kid? Trust me, they’re not the kind to take water scooters into the city like she did.”
“Denise, just get it done,” Anke snaps.
I don’t stand until they’re far enough away from the bed, as if they might jump at me and touch the bed themselves regardless. I blink away tears. It’s dumb, I know that—I’m treating Anke’s hands like some kind of nuclear hazard—but this is my space, mine, and too little is left that’s mine as is. I can’t even face Iris. With the way she tried to help, it feels as though I’m betraying her by offering this solution myself.
I keep my head low and follow Anke’s orders one-handed. Take off both the satin and regular pillowcases, show her the pillow, shake it (although I tell her she can feel the pillow herself: that’s OK, since the pillowcases will cover it again anyway)—lift the sheets, shake them, lift the mattress long enough for her to shine her light underneath, let her feel the mattress (which is OK, too, since she’s just touching it from the bottom) . . .
They tell us to stay in our room for another hour.
I wash my hands, straighten the sheets, wash my hands again, and wrap the pillow in its cases.
“That was a good solution,” Iris says.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“For what?”
Being difficult. Not letting her help me. I keep my eyes on the sheets as I make the bed and let out a small laugh.”
― Corinne Duyvis, On the Edge of Gone

“She unwinds her scarf, taking so long about it that I wonder if she expects me to respond. “You were following the rules,” I offer after a minute. It makes her words no more pleasant. Resentment. Was that how she’d looked at me? Then how am I supposed to trust how she looks at me now?
My words elicit a thankful smile. “Mostly, though, I knew you could do the job. Did you ever know other autistic people?”
I shake my head. I’d heard rumors about one teacher, but never asked him. Mom had encouraged me to find a local support group, but I’d never seen the appeal—or the need. It wouldn’t change anything. I had friends, anyway. Peopleonline, my fellow volunteers at the Way Station. I even got along with Iris’s friends.
“Well, I did, and I feel like a fool for never recognizing your autism. I had autistic colleagues at the university. They were accommodated, and they thrived. One researcher came in earlier than everyone else and would stay the longest. I saw the same strengths in you once I knew to look for them. You’re punctual, you’re precise, you’re trustworthy. When you don’t know something, you either figure it out or you ask, and either way, you get it right. I wanted to give you the same chance my colleagues had, and that other Nassau passengers got. One of the doctors is autistic—did you know?” Els silences an incoming call. “Does that answer your question?”
― Corinne Duyvis

“I mean: if you’re going outside to look for your sister, I get it.” Max goes silent. Maybe Mirjam’s death is hitting him now, maybe his voice will choke—but he goes on. “But if you’re going outside to help your mother . . .” He gestures helplessly at my injured arm. His fingers stop a centimeter away, hovering in midair. “Don’t risk it. Don’t risk you.”
“She’s my mother.”
“The captain will never let her on if she doesn’t even try. Not when there are so many people who haven’t had thechance to try. People we can use on the ship. People who have been on that waiting list forever.”
There are a dozen things I want to say. But she’s mymother—as though that means as much as people pretend it does.
She is trying, just in a different way—as though I’m convincing myself.
I wasn’t on that waiting list, either.
I might not be someone the ship can use, as much as I’m trying to be.”
― Corinne Duyvis, On the Edge of Gone

“...ABA doesn't aim to offer neuroqueer children new repertoires of meaning. To smile isn't to signify one's contentment; it's to comply with a behavioral and prosocial demand.”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“The rhetorical training of ABA might be best understood as a kind of "we are always watching you.”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“...the default assumption is that it's better to be nonautistic than it is to be autistic, always. And this assumption has done great damage to autistic and nonautistic people alike.”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“What ABA has come to signal for autistics is an in-made rhetorical paradox from which escape is difficult: the laughable presumption that autistics can only communicate their feelings about ABA because they've endured ABA.”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“Clinical rhetorics present serious challenges to disability disclosure. To claim autism is to claim rudeness, silence, tactlessness, nonpersonhood; it is to invite doubting others to lay-diagnose or question one's rhetorical competence. And yet it is precisely these claims and challenges that buttress much of the autistic culture movement's embrace of public disclosure, of uncloseting one's autism.”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“I do not subscribe to functioning labels because functioning labels are inaccurate and dehumanizing, because functioning labels fail to capture the breadth and complexity and highly contextual interrelations of one's neurology and environment, both of which are plastic and malleable and dynamic. Functioning is the corporeal gone capitalistic -- it is an assumption that one's body and being can be quantitatively measured, that one's bodily outputs and bodily actions are neither outputs nor actions unless commodifiable.”
― Melanie Yergeau, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness

“Extremes of any combination come to be seen as 'psychiatric deviance.' In the argument presented here, where disorder begins is entirely down to social convention, and where one decides to draw the line across the (human) spectrum (of dispositional diversity).”
― Damian Milton, A Mismatch of Salience

“The Price I Pay (The Sonnet)

I spent my life in the depth of heart,
So my social skills are a little lacking.
Either they want me to be deep always,
Or they simply call me rather cheesy.
Whenever I try small talking as human,
I fail and fail again most spectacularly.
That's the price I pay for being your rock,
A timeless pillar unfit for warmth and amity.
Mine is not to ask why, mine is to do or die,
A path in which I turned my life into an idea.
Still it'd be nice to be treated as a human,
It'd be nice to feel the gentleness of another.
There is no greatness without weakness.
Greats must persevere no matter the coldness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mücadele Muhabbet: Gospel of An Unarmed Soldier

“Naskar and Abi (The Sonnet)

Ask me about the strangest secrets of human behavior,
I would ramble on and on without stopping for hours.
But try to make small talk with me as a cold stranger,
And I would struggle to put a single thought in words.
Only force that breaks my autistic barrier is attachment,
I only remember of one person with whom I could be me.
When she left I let the God complex blow at full throttle,
So that Naskar survives even if nobody gets to see Abi.
Perhaps that is why without even knowing I invented Abi,
So that the real Abi finds expression, at least in fiction.
Thus, if and when the strain gets too heavy I could escape,
The vastness of Naskar, without escaping the conviction.
There is no rock of ages without some everyday weakness.
It is the weakness that keeps us grounded as sapiens.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“You know why I write books? Because it is the one thing about the outcome of which I don't give a damn. I don't care if they gather dust, I don't care if they don't sell. In fact, among my hundred plus works, there are a few that have sold barely ten copies. Yet, am I bothered! Nope!

I don't write to sell books, I write because my mind teeters on the edge of psychosis if I spend a single day without writing. Sure, the ultimate mission behind my legacy is the construction of a humane world, but if you get down to the actual morale of the moment - the only recompense I get out of it all, is the felicity of putting my fervor on paper - thus immortalizing them for eons to come. That's how this one life could produce such an impossibly inexhaustible amount of literature in the first place - because I dream my ideas, breathe my ideas, and live my ideas. Better a lesser read genius, than a misread genius. Or to put it plainer still - I am not a writer, I am an anomaly - for better or for worse, I am an anomaly.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets