Neurodivergent Quotes

“If coming out as autistic as an adult is hard, it’s only because of the resistance of those around you. It doesn’t change the actual challenges you have in your job, your relationships, or your perception. Which is just such a perfect fact because the challenges you’ve always faced haven’t been due to the autism either — not really. They’ve been due to the way the world has been structured based on neurotypical thinking and socialization. In most cases, autism is a social disability, not a medical one.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“After all, simply saying “We’re all on the spectrum” is a cognitive roadblock. It’s absolutely efficient, in an energy consumptive way. We see this method used all the time when people use thought-terminating clichés to end a problem-solving process and settle their thinking: It is what it is. Don’t rock the boat. That’s not how we do things here. It’s above your pay grade. Let’s agree to disagree. YOLO.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“We should also address this term neurotypical, as it is too often used as a substitute for the word normal, even though this was not the original intention. Simply stated, it refers to someone whose neurological structure developed in a way that is typical of the field of study.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“For how much autism is discussed, far too many people don’t have a good working definition of what it is.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“Hateless, Undivided, Mindful And Neurodiverse - that's HUMAN.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood

“When you work at a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that's what a human is.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“I might live in chaos, but love still anchors me.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“My imagination ignited once again. I kept staring at my reflection. My delusions of grandeur formed a shape, on their own, in my reflection—in my double reality.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“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

“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

“One of the most maddening things you’re going to hear is “Well, we’re all on the spectrum.” Usually, this will be someone close to you, and you’ll have just disclosed to them that you are autistic. Their reply takes this disclosure and — seemingly — integrates it into their worldview while actually dump- ing it in the garbage.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“As we move forward into different thinking styles, it’ll become more and more apparent why being understood and listened to is especially enticing to autistic people who are coming to an awareness of themselves.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“These other people have diverged from our expectations of neurological development, and from this we get the term neurodivergent. But this is a broad label that is not synonymous with autistic, the way that rectangle is descriptive of but not synonymous with square.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“People used to think the brain’s primary function was to take in the world around us and perceive stimuli. While that’s something it does, the brain spends a lot more energy filtering stimuli out, allowing us to discern the important ones from the unimportant ones.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“It’s a common quality of autistic thinking that we aren’t sure which details are considered necessary by others when making a point or telling a story. What’s funny about that — and we will dig into this later — is the certainty that the reader or listener has a better idea of what these details are than the person doing the explaining and that it just so happens that the correlation between the included details and the patience of the listener is one to one. This raises no red flags at all. It just “is what it is.” This makes sense because their attention has to be engaged — but it also seems unfair.”
― Sol Smith, The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

“Hateless, Undivided, Mindful And
Neurodiverse - that's HUMAN.
Mind carries its own detergent,
stay woke and stay human!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood

“Jasper often felt like he had been dropped into a life-size board game without anyone giving him a set of rules. If he knew what was expected, he could memorize it and act accordingly. Otherwise, he invariably made a misstep.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“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

“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

“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