Aspergers Syndrome Quotes

“She had a disorder, but it didn’t define her. She was Stella. She was a unique person.”
― Helen Hoang, The Kiss Quotient

“A person with autism lives in his own world, while a person with Asperger's lives in our world, in a way of his own choosing”
― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“Females with ASDs often develop ‘coping mechanisms’ that can cover up the intrinsic difficulties they experience. They may mimic their peers, watch from the sidelines, use their intellect to figure out the best ways to remain undetected, and they will study, practice, and learn appropriate approaches to social situations. Sounds easy enough, but in fact these strategies take a lot of work and can more often than not lead to exhaustion, withdrawal, anxiety, selective mutism, and depression. -Dr. Shana Nichols”
― Liane Holliday Willey, Safety Skills for Asperger Women: How to Save a Perfectly Good Female Life

“I've met so many parents of the kids who are on the low end of the autism spectrum, kids who are diametrically opposed to Jacob, with his Asperger's. They tell me I'm lucky to have a son who's verbal, who is blisteringly intelligent, who can take apart the broken microwave and have it working again an hour later. They think there is no greater hell than having a son who is locked in his own world, unaware that there's a wider one to explore. But try having a son who is locked in his own world and still wants to make a connection. A son who tries to be like everyone else but truly doesn't know how.”
― Jodi Picoult, House Rules

“Ignore and ignorance share the same root.”
― Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird

“Universities are renowned for their tolerance of unusual characters, especially if they show originality and dedication to their research. I have often made the comment that not only are universities a 'cathedral' for worship of knowledge, they are also 'sheltered workshops' for the socially challenged.”
― Tony Attwood, The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome

“[Patricia Highsmith] was an extremely unbalanced person, extremely hostile and misanthropic and totally incapable of any kind of relationship, not just intimate ones. I felt sorry for her, because it wasn't her fault. There was something in her early days or whatever that made her incapable. She drove everybody away and people who really wanted to be friends ended up putting the phone down on her.
It seemed to me as if she had to ape feelings and behaviour, like Ripley. Of course sometimes having no sense of social behaviour can be charming, but in her case it was alarming. I remember once, when she was trying to have a dinner party with people she barely knew, she deliberately leaned towards the candle on the table and set fire to her hair. People didn't know what to do as it was a very hostile act and the smell of singeing and burning filled the room.”
― Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι

“[Patricia Highsmith] was overwhelmed by sensory stimulation - there were too many people and too much noise and she just could not handle the supermarket. She continually jumped, afraid that someone might recognise or touch her. She could not make the simplest of decisions - which type of bread did she want, or what kind of salami? I tried to do the shopping as quickly as possible, but at the check-out she started to panic. She took out her wallet, knocked off her glasses, dropped the money on the floor, stuff was going all over the place.”
― Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι

“I don’t act weird because it’s awesome. I act weird because i’m not used to normal people”
― Dean Mackin

“If we are only interested in changing the AS person so that they can better meld themselves into society - a tenuous and nebulous concept to begin with - then perhaps we are misguided. The AS community gives us much cause to celebrate. Never, I think, should we expect or want them to be carbon copies of the most socially adept among us. We should only suggest whatever help they need to insure they have every opportunity of leading productive, rewarding and self-sufficient lives. We would lose too much and they would lose even more, if our goals were anything more, or less.”
― Liane Holliday Willey, Pretending to be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) Expanded Edition

“Simply put, within AS, there is a wide range of function. In truth, many AS people will never receive a diagnosis. They will continue to live with other labels or no label at all. At their best, they will be the eccentrics who wow us with their unusual habits and stream-of-consciousness creativity, the inventors who give us wonderfully unique gadgets that whiz and whirl and make our life surprisingly more manageable, the geniuses who discover new mathematical equations, the great musicians and writers and artists who enliven our lives. At their most neutral, they will be the loners who never now quite how to greet us, the aloof who aren't sure they want to greet us, the collectors who know everyone at the flea market by name and date of birth, the non-conformists who cover their cars in bumper stickers, a few of the professors everyone has in college. At their most noticeable, they will be the lost souls who invade our personal space, the regulars at every diner who carry on complete conversations with the group ten tables away, the people who sound suspiciously like robots, the characters who insist they wear the same socks and eat the same breakfast day in and day out, the people who never quite find their way but never quite lose it either.”
― Liane Holliday Willey, Pretending to be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) Expanded Edition

“As soon as [Patricia Highsmith] had stopped work, she felt purposeless and quite at a loss about what to do with herself. 'There is no real life except in working,' she wrote in her notebook, 'that is to say in the imagination.' It was in this state that she observed that only one situation would drive her to commit murder - being part of a family unit. Most likely, she thought, she would strike out in anger at a small child, felling them in one blow. But children over the age of eight, she surmised, would probably take two blows to kill. The reality of socialising with anyone, no matter how close, she said, left her feeling fatigued.”
― Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι

“And I think for a moment, because people don't actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they've read it in books, or they say incredible things like "autistic people have no sense of humour or imagination or empathy" when I'm standing right there beside them (and one day I'm going to point out that that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they -- even worse -- talk to me like I'm about five, and can't understand.
"It's like living with all your senses turned up to full volume all the time," I say. "And it's like living life in a different language, so you can't ever quite relax because even when you think you're fluent it's still using a different part of your brain so by the end of the day you're exhausted.”
― Rachael Lucas, The State of Grace

“We're all different.”
― Lisa Jewell, Watching You

“The most gentle creatures in the world, are sometimes the most feared”
― Dean Mackin

“Not everything that steps out of line, and thus 'abnormal,' must necessarily be 'inferior.”
― Hans Asperger

“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

“My first impression of [Patricia Highsmith] was a loneliness, a sadness in one so young (we were both in our early thirties) with absolutely no sense of joy or balance. Gauche to an extreme, really physically clumsy as well as boyish, it was almost impossible to put her at ease. It was as if she felt a deep distrust of everything.”
― Patricia Schartle

“We have so little in common, but we were both avid readers growing up. I read almost nonstop when I was little, and it saved me in school. I hated classes, hated teachers. They always wanted me to do things I didn't want to do. But because I was a reader, they knew I wasn't stupid, just different. They cut me slack. It got me through.
Reading couldn't help me make friends, though. I never got the hang of it. I would talk to kids, and over the years a handful of them even seemed to like me enough to ask to come over, but after that first visit to the house they never lasted. Ma told me what I did wrong but I could never manage to do it right. 'Act interested in what they say,' she said, but they never said anything interesting. 'Don't talk too much,' she said, but it never seemed like too much to me. So it wasn't like people threw tomatoes at me, or dipped my pigtails in inkwells, or stood up to move their desks away from mine, but I never really managed to make friends that I could keep.
And I got used to it. I got used to a lot of things. Writing extra papers to make up for falling short in class participation. Volunteering to do the planning and the typing up whenever we had group work assigned, because I knew I could never really work right with a group. And the coping always worked. Up until three years into college, where despite Ma's repeated demands to try harder, I stalled. Every semester since, I was always still trying to finish that last Oral Communications class, which I had repeatedly failed. This semester I only made it six weeks in before it became obvious I wouldn't pass. I think we'd both finally given up.”
― Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter

“I never allowed my Autism/Asperger's to have the prerogative to neither tear nor slow me down. I earned a degree in chemistry, juggle for elementary schools, play piano for seniors on Sunday mornings, and been mentoring children/teens from K-12 at Royal Rangers almost every week for six years and counting.”
― Matthew Kenslow, Juggling the Issues: Living With Asperger's Syndrome

“Sometimes asking"Are you ok"
won't do much. Saying "If you
need to talk, I'm here" will.
People need time
to talk after realising
someone cares to listen.”
― Dean Mackin

“Introversion is also very different from Asperger's syndrome, the autism spectrum disorder that involves difficulties with social interactions such as reading facial expressions and body language.... unlike people with Asperger's, introverts often have strong social skills. Compared with the one third to one half of Americans who are introverts, only one in five thousand people has Asperger's.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Sometimes I say stupid things. Sometimes I’m unaware. Sometimes I’ll read you wrong. I’m sorry”
― Dean Mackin

“Against this catalog of social difficulties, we must keep in mind that AS involves a different kind of intelligence. The strong drive to systemize means that the person with AS becomes a specialist in something, or even in everything they delve into. One man with AS in Denmark who I met put it this way: “You people [without AS] are generalists, content to know a little bit about a lot of subjects. We people [with AS] are specialists. Once we start to explore a subject, we do not leave it until we have gathered as much information as we can.” In effect, the systemizing drive in AS is often a drive to identify the underlying structure in the world.”
― Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: Male And Female Brains And The Truth About Autism

“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

“If I could, I would ask the world to make me skates so that I could find its frozen water and set myself free to smile, laugh, dance and cheer.

I'd see the boundaries that would be in a world frozen in its place and they would keep me safe, away from where the waters warm, away from the stares, away from the thoughts that melt and tear.

I would ask the world to skate with me, looking at the gladness I had found, knowing, really knowing, there was nothing left to fear.

I think then we would be free to live life as we could, with more in common than apart, the fog would lift, the confusion would end and true understanding would hold us dear.”
― Liane Holliday Willey, Pretending to be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) Expanded Edition

“I have learned to accept the fact that I will make mistakes at nearly every turn, but that those mistakes can be softened if I am honest about who I am to my girls.”
― Liane Holliday Willey, Pretending to be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) Expanded Edition

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

“I was doing well in all my classes, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But I started to feel sick, every day.”
― Charlotte Amelia Poe, How to Be Autistic

“I was too young to realize that my brain and thoughts could make me just as ill as an upset stomach could.”
― Charlotte Amelia Poe