Autism Quotes - Page 3

we match,” I say, and as soon as the words are out I already know that tomorrow will come and I will remember this moment and wince. We match?? And so, even through this drunken haze, I feel relief when he doesn’t laugh at me. Instead he squeezes me a little tighter, brings me a tiny bit closer so my edges are against his edges, and it’s all warm. Our bodies fit. I secretly sniff him, and get rewarded with his fresh lemony scent

Can you imagine how your life would be if you couldn't talk?

Part of the torture of autism is that the future is so impossibly unsure. Your child might become a fully functioning member of society and appear no different than anyone else, even if he does have to look at mouths instead of eyes and can't stand to give his own kids a bath. Or, he might be so violent that he requires institutionalization... Either way, you're expected to work your ass off for it.

If [Patricia Highsmith] saw an acquaintance walking down the sidewalk she would deliberately cross over so as to avoid them. When she came in contact with people, she realised she split herself into many different, false, identities, but, because she loathed lying and deceit, she chose to absent herself completely rather than go through such a charade. Highsmith interpreted this characteristic as an example of 'the eternal hypocrisy in me', rather her mental shape-shifting had its source in her quite extraordinary ability to empathise. Her imaginative capacity to subsume her own identity, while taking on the qualities of those around her - her negative capability, if you like - was so powerful that she said she often felt like her inner visions were far more real than the outside world. She aligned herself with the mad and the miserable, 'the insane man who feels himself one with all mankind, all life, because in losing his mind, he has lost his ego, his self-ness', yet realised that such a state inspired her fiction. Her ambition, she said, was to write about the underlying sickness of this 'daedal planet' and capture the essence of the human condition: eternal disappointment.

My aim is to sort the jumble of information we throw at these children and present it in such a way that they will have a greater chance of achieving independence and fulfilment.

I reached down to feel the soil, and I touched the outreaching roots of the trees that bore horizontally and vertically hundreds of feet through the forest. I stroked the earth with my palm, and I could almost feel that invisible network of capillary roots that sucks moisture and nutrients out of every inch of the soil I was standing on. I breathed in and out. I was part of the forest. I was alive.

When teaching children with autism we must be quick to adapt, follow our instinct and go off plan.

those glasses aren't for the sun they're for darkness, exclaims Rue. Sometimes when we harvest through the night, they'll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in the trees. Where the torchlight doesn't reach. One time, this boy Martin, he tried to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot. They killed a boy for taking these/ I say Yes. and everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn't right in the head. I mean he still acted like a three year old. He just wanted the glasses to play with, says Rue. Hearing this makes me feel like District 12 is some sort of safe haven. Of course, people keel over from starvation all the time, but I can't imagine the peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child. There's a little girl, one of greasy sae's gradkids, who wanders around the Hob. She's not quite right but she's treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things.

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.

Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.--Ray Bradbury

You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects.

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.