Neurodivergent Quotes

“I fake being normal better than most normal people fake being sane.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“People don’t say what they mean. They say what makes them likable, and expect you to guess the rest.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“I take things literally. Not because I’m stupid. Because I listen.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“Why are autistic people called abnormal… when we’re the only ones who speak the truth?”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“I became the girl who made people uncomfortable just by asking them to be honest.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“I want out of the labels. I don’t want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable… A blank. Unknown. Undefined.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“I’ve even given Georgie his own P.O. Box so he can get mail. Sometimes I send him gifts and then I keep them for myself.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“Now, I no longer saw impossibility in the mirror.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“What I carry is mine alone. A private apocalypse, constant and precise.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“I open my eyes and the room is on fire. Completely unconcerned, I watch the fire grow larger and larger, then shrink and die out.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“I looked into the mirror and everything came alive—my delusions, my dreams were burying everything within reality.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“I’ve been able to find some meaning in schizophrenia, which helps me redefine how I see myself.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“To be fluent in a language you never wanted to learn is its own kind of grief.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“Autism is not a disease to be cured, autism is normal, a different kind of normal, but normal no less, and with a modest amount of care the acclimation feels less challenging.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“I don't know how I ended up in a world this miserable. All this suffering just to die one day.”
― Sadia Hakim, The Weight of Tender Things

“This is how it begins-with shadows having conversations and a mind that can't help but to eavesdrop”
― Ptim Pellerin, Voyeur of Shadows

“I’ve known what it’s like to sit somewhere loud so you don’t have to hear yourself think.”
― B.L. Spencer, Silentwhisper

“Your child wasn't born broken.
They were born with a Ferrari engine
and bicycle brakes."

— ADHD: From Chaos to Calm”
― Gabi la abuela de Dani, ADHD: From Chaos to Calm: Heartfelt Tools to Understand Your Child's World and Raise Them with Peace

“Recovery doesn’t happen with big plans or big changes. It begins with tiny shifts.”
― Tanya Valentin, Tiny Anchors: Small Moments of Care for Parents in Burnout

“The struggle didn't leave a scar; it left a geography.”
― Brandi Lynn, Where the Broken Light Falls: An Inventory of Neurodivergence, Chronic Pain, and the Architecture of the Bone

“When everything is frightening, you have to learn to be brave.
So I learned.
And for a while, I was good at it.
Over time, things seemed to get less scary
And I found that I didn't need to be quite as brave as before.
But lately, the fear has crept back inside me and taken hold.
Where is my bravery now?
Do I have the strength to reclaim it?”
― Bex Ollerton, Lavender Clouds

“The date of birth she’d given when signing in set her age at twenty-eight but she looked younger. Her hair was long and blonde with streaks of pink, a soft cerise that happened to match the fluffy cowgirl boots she was wearing.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“Being autistic meant she was a vegetable in the fruit bowl. Social interactions could be dire if the other person was able to sense she was different. Events like the Hathaway Dinner were full of hungry piranhas and Raina didn’t fancy being a nice juicy morsel for them to devour. She’d learned to mask but, at best, that only made her feel like a piece of crystallized fruit in the bowl. Something that looked exactly the same, but don’t bite into it. The inside isn’t what you’re expecting.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“He probably relied on AI for all of his conversation starters tonight and you’ve just shut him down entirely. He’ll be licking his wounds over the girl who played hard-to-get all night now.’
‘Woman. And I don’t play hard to get,’ Raina said, regarding him coolly. ‘Men play easy-to-resist.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“I rarely met a bad manager. I met a lot of untrained ones.”
― Howard Chambers

“That's not a knowledge gap. That's a design gap.”
― Howard Chambers, MISREAD: How the Workplace Misunderstands Neurodivergent Brains – and What We Can Do About It

“She felt so out of place and far from everyone. A feeling that had been with her for as long as she’d known she was different. She’d worked hard to get to the contented, confident version of herself she now presented to the public. Yet sometimes, the neurotypical world would hit her with strange moments of déjà vu. Moments that took her back to sleepovers, school dances and weekends spent reading at home. Déjà vu that reminded her that although she could put on a good show and play pretend, she would never be one of them. Not only because of unspoken, unconscious prejudice, but because she always sensed, on nights like this, that a part of her was missing.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“But you need to stop being Clark Kent and start being who you're meant to be. Which is fucking Superman."
"Tom Branimir," Raina said gravely. "If you're getting at the 'autism is a superpower' shit, don't. I tried telling myself that as a kid, but life knocks that right out of you."
"I don't mean that. I mean people fucking need you. I've read all the comments from your followers. I've seen the impact. You're doing something important. That's why you make the right people mad. So, stop acting like a small-town Clark Kent. Pretending you're just doing a civic duty, keeping your head down and hunching over. Stand tall. Like the goddamn hero they know you are.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“Raina was fascinated by behavior, mostly because she’d been told she was doing it wrong her entire life.
Now, as she stared openly at Tom Branimir’s face, she was grateful more than ever for being neurodivergent. It meant seeing every detail in bright, beautiful clarity. It meant feeling every touch a thousand times more intensely.
I can see every beautiful bit of you. In a way so many others can’t.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“When his fingers gently slipped beneath the lace of her underwear, caressing the most sensitive part of an always sensitive body, she bucked her hips and made a desperate sound. For hers was a body that felt everything all at once. The rush of every other living thing and every sensory atom in the air. So when Tom touched her, it was almost too pleasurable to bear.
She watched the realization hit him as he stroked her. He observed how she whimpered and moaned. In the past, with other men, the knowledge of her sensitivity had turned them into mindless, greedy animals, but Raina could see wonder pass through Tom’s dark eyes. His gaze shot to hers and he was looking at her as though she were something to be worshipped.
“Oh, sweetheart. You feel it all, don’t you?”
He continued to stroke, whispering sweet things in her ear while she half sobbed. She caught words like “beautiful” and “perfect” as he slipped his fingers inside her, and the sensation was so overwhelming, she almost blacked out.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story