Laura

“...the reason is that when we look at nature, we receive a sort of permission to be alive in this world...”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Criticizing people, winding them up, making idiots of them or fooling them doesn't make people with autism laugh. What makes us smile from the inside is seeing something beautiful, or a memory makes us laugh. This generally happens when there's nobody watching us. And at night, on our own, we might burst out laughing underneath the duvet, or roar with later in an empty room ... When we don't need to think about other people or anything else, that's when we wear our aural expressions.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“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

“I think that people with autism are born outside the regime of civilization. Sure, this is just my own made-up theory, but I think that, as a result of all the killings in the world and the selfish planet-wrecking that humanity has committed, a deep sense of crisis exists. Autism has somehow arisen out of this. Although people with autism look like other people physically, we are in fact very different in many ways. We are more like travelers from the distant, distant past. And if, by our being here, we could help the people of the world remember what truly matters for the Earth, that would give us a quiet pleasure.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism