Autistic Narrator Quotes

A smaller plate got mixed in with the large ones I'm working on. I'm tempted to put it back into the dishwasher by the other plates that size, but that's - that's probably weird, I think, and Mirjam is looking, so I just set it aside for a stack of its own. "We were selected early on. We couldn't make it on board sooner."
I have no idea if that lie will hold water, but Mirjam is nodding. "Gotcha. I was happy to move on board, myself. Someone broke into our house the other month - looking for food, I guess - and it didn't feel safe after that. Plus, it was cold. We had to board up the window they broke, and couldn't find anyone to fix it properly."
"That sucks," I say - usually a safe response.
"Tell me about it."
I have a nice stack of plates now. I put my hands on each side of it, straightening the stack before reaching for the first batch of small plates. There's a sense of relief when I add them to the single plate I set aside. ~ Corinne Duyvis

I mean: if you're going outside to look for your sister, I get it." Max goes silent. Maybe Mirjam's death is hitting him now, maybe his voice will choke - but he goes on. "But if you're going outside to help your mother . . ." He gestures helplessly at my injured arm. His fingers stop a centimeter away, hovering in midair. "Don't risk it. Don't risk you."
"She's my mother."
"The captain will never let her on if she doesn't even try. Not when there are so many people who haven't had thechance to try. People we can use on the ship. People who have been on that waiting list forever."
There are a dozen things I want to say. But she's mymother - as though that means as much as people pretend it does.
She is trying, just in a different way - as though I'm convincing myself.
I wasn't on that waiting list, either.
I might not be someone the ship can use, as much as I'm trying to be. ~ Corinne Duyvis

They often took a difficulty I had and turned it into an amusing little anecdote. They would take a deadly seriousness, my seriousness, and turn it into a great laugh that they would then let out into the room. What kind of people were they to do that? The amusing anecdote had sharp edges, flew into me and scratched my soul. ~ Gunilla Gerland

I am much less autistic now, compared to when I was young. I remember some behaviors like picking carpet fuzz and watching spinning plates for hours. I didn't want to be touched. I couldn't shut out background noise. I didn't talk until I was about 4 years old. I screamed. I hummed. But as I grew up, I improved. ~ Temple Grandin

In the 50s and 60s, kids were taught how to shake hands. They were taught how to have manners. There needs to be a lot more of that kind of stuff because the autistic mind doesn't pick up social things and subtle cues. ~ Temple Grandin

People on the autistic spectrum tend to get fixated on what they think. ~ Temple Grandin

And now there are two distinct phases to sex with Daryl: the first two minutes like an exam from an autistic gynecologist, the next ten a visit from the Roto-Rooter man. ~ Jess Walter

Autistic reality is of much value as non-Autistic reality ~ Jeanette Purkis

I go to all the appointments. All the meetings. I sit with the team of inclusion teachers, occupational therapists, doctors, social workers, remedial teachers, and the cab driver that gets him from appointment to appointment, and I push for everything that can be done for my autistic boy. But I will never have a plan that will fix him. Noah is not something to be fixed.
And our life will never be normal. And people always say,
oh well what's normal, there's no such thing really, and I say
sure there is ... there's a spectrum ... and there's lots and lots of possibilities within that spectrum, and trust me buddy, ducks on the moon ain't one of them ... .but ... .
In this abnormal life, I get to live with a pirate,
and a bird fancier, and an ogre, and a hedgehog, and many many superheroes, and aliens and monsters
and an angel.
I get to go to infinity and beyond. ~ Kelley Jo Burke

A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that's about all. ~ J.D. Salinger

The light filtered through the trees, rays of sunlight splitting around the vast trunks, the branches above us fluttering in a faint wind, and the green needles of Douglas Firs shimmering silver underneath in the breeze. ~ Ned Hayes

These types of films that are psychologically sort of dark at times, I find extremely exciting to do because there's always something to think about. There's nothing more boring than to show up on set and say a line and know that your character means exactly what they say. It's interesting to have an unreliable narrator in a film and that's what both of those films have been. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

Q25 What's the reason you jump?
When I'm jumping it's as if my feelings are going upward to the sky. Really, my urge to be swallowed up by the sky is enough to make my heart quiver. When I'm jumping, I can feel my body parts really well, too
my bounding legs and my clapping hands
and that makes me feel so, so good. ~ Naoki Higashida

I myself am opaque, for some reason. Their eyes cannot see me. Yes, that's it: The world is autistic with respect to me. ~ Anne Nesbet

One in 150 kids is autistic these days. The autism spectrum is growing. ~ Luke Ford

My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

I am a crazy woman... That last part is true. ~ Brunonia Barry

The truth of the matter is that for all the drive-in movie references, what Weston Ochse has really created in Multiplex Fandango is a travelogue. Acting as narrator and guide, Weston takes you on a trip to places familiar and obscure-New Orleans, the Sonoran desert, Mexico's Pacific coast, and the dark, impenetrable reaches of the soul. He shows off sights that chill the blood, and as with any good trip, the things seen and experienced along the way will stay with you for a lifetime. ~ Jeff Mariotte

Kerouac's books portray a hero and narrator free and easy, confident, sure of his rebellion against the American system. In reality, Jack was torn between Catholicism, Buddhism, and his own demon-driven pursuit of kicks, between spirit and flesh, between mom's house and the Beat coffeehouse, patriotism and subversion, men and women, society and solitude, carousing and meditation, sacred and profane, secular and divine. It's a miracle he survived as long as he did. ~ Gerald Nicosia

The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write ... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up. ~ Chris Van Allsburg

For a while, every smart and shy eccentric from Bobby Fischer to Bill Gate was hastily fitted with this label, and many were more or less believably retrofitted, including Isaac Newton, Edgar Allen Pie, Michelangelo, and Virginia Woolf. Newton had great trouble forming friendships and probably remained celibate. In Poe's poem Alone, he wrote that "All I lov'd - I lov'd alone." Michelangelo is said to have written "I have no friends of any sort and I don't want any." Woolf killed herself.
Asperger's disorder, once considered a sub-type of autism, was named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, a pioneer, in the 1940s, in identifying and describing autism. Unlike other early researchers, according to the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, Asperger felt that autistic people could have beneficial talents, especially what he called a "particular originality of thought" that was often beautiful and pure, unfiltered by culture of discretion, unafraid to grasp at extremely unconventional ideas. Nearly every autistic person that Sacks observed appeard happiest when alone. The word "autism" is derived from autos, the Greek word for "self."
"The cure for Asperger's syndrome is very simple," wrote Tony Attwood, a psychologist and Asperger's expert who lives in Australia. The solution is to leave the person alone. "You cannot have a social deficit when you are alone. You cannot have a communication problem when you are alone. All the diagnostic criteria dissolve in so ~ Michael Finkel

Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman. ~ Leni Zumas

If a baby really has no awareness of himself and is totally thing-directed and at the same time all his states of mind are projected onto things, our second paradox makes sense: on the one hand, thought in babies can be viewed as pure accommodation or exploratory movements, but on the other this very same thought is only one, long, completely autistic waking dream. ~ Jean Piaget

It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader. ~ Akhil Sharma

Can you accept me, can you love me? Without conditions ? Can you nurture me, can you respect me? Without conditions ? Will you embrace me as my own unique autistic self? ~ Tina J. Richardson

Then the front doorbell (already too long delayed by my rambling narrative) rang. ~ Iris Murdoch

I know of nobody who is purely autistic, or purely neurotypical. Even God has some autistic moments, which is why the planets spin. ~ Jerry Newport

I really like reading stories with an unreliable narrator, because the person telling you what happened can't be trusted with the facts and you have to figure it out.
Maybe when it's your own story, you're always going to be an unreliable narrator" -Avery (Night Owl) ~ Holly Goldberg Sloan

The autistic personality is an extreme variant of male intelligence. ~ Hans Asperger

I played Joseph in 'Joseph & The Technicolor Dreamcoat,' which was a bit silly because I am a girl. I wanted to be the narrator, but I had fun with it anyway. ~ Eliza Doolittle

What the narrator comes to realize is that the past "cannot be described objectively" and that her present will always mediate her past. ~ Linda Hutcheon

The truth is, I hate not being the first person narrator all the way through! To paraphrase David Copperfield, I don't know whether I'm the hero or the victim of this tale. But either way, shouldn't I dominate it? ~ Anne Rice

Autistic adults were once autistic kids. We grow up and need acceptance and understanding as well. ~ Tina J. Richardson

I'm interested in getting deep into a person's consciousness and doing so in ways in which the narrator is secondary to the character's own thoughts. ~ Philipp Meyer

I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At least they were getting paid. I was working forty feet above the ground, breathing in sulfur fumes from Satan's vomitorium, for free.
Character building, my father said.
Mandatory community service, the judge said. Court-ordered restitution for the Foul Deed. He nailed me with the bill for the damage I had done, which meant I had to sell my car and bust my hump at a landscaping company all summer. Oh, and he gave me six months of meetings with a probation officer who thought I was a waste of human flesh.
Still, it was better than jail.
I pushed the mop back and forth, trying to coat the seams evenly. We didn't want any rain getting into the building and destroying the classrooms. Didn't want to hurt the school. No, sir, we sure didn't. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson