Julia Bascom > Quotes

“One of the cruelest tricks our culture plays on autistic people is that it makes us strangers to ourselves. We grow up knowing we're different, but that difference is defined for us in terms of an absence of neurotypicality, not as the presence of another equally valid way of being.”
― Julia Bascom, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking

“I have talents that I'm not supposed to have: I can tell who crushes on who by how they stand, I can read strides, I can hear the tonal differences between an alto and a soprano singing the same line so clearly that to me they sing entirely different notes, and I can read through the lines and tell when a person doesn't need to be writing at all. That, that is what makes me a snob, because I cannot abide a person putting pen to paper or fingers on keys when they don't need to, when word choice is not as relevant and demanding and essential to them as breathing and syntax is about being correct and not about being evocative.”
― Julia Bascom, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking

“Dear Younger Self,
It's not just you.
You really are different. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Yes, it is hard. No, it doesn't get better.
You get stronger.
-E.”
― Julia Bascom, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking

“Hidden abilities created the myth of “low functioning” autistics, like hidden disabilities created the myth of “high functioning” autistics.”
― Julia Bascom, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking

“My own recollection of this meeting is of feeling that, after a life spent among aliens, I had met someone who came from the same planet as me. We understood each other. At”
― Julia Bascom, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking