I can remember being bullied and teased. It was absolutely horrible. I got kicked out of ninth grade for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. It was absolutely terrible.

There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child CAN do, instead of what he cannot do.

What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool? You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.

I am different, not less

The world needs different kinds of minds to work together.

The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic, because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave. It's like being in a play; I'm always in a play.

If you have a 2 or 3 year old who is not talking, you must start an early intervention program. The worst thing you can do with an autistic 3 year old is to do nothing.

Nature is cruel but we don't have to be

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

I had people in my life who didn't give up on me: my mother, my aunt, my science teacher. I had one-on-one speech therapy. I had a nanny who spent all day playing turn-taking games with me.

People talk about curing autism. But if you got rid of all those traits, who's going to make the next computer?

People are basically irritating. Myself included.

Even in an empty room, we are never alone.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.

We want his power more than his purity.

I think I've seen the first 'RoboCop' like 15 or 20 times. I'm like a kid that way.

Somewhere along the line I'd lost the will not to eat.

We are all in it together. This is a war. We take a few shots and it will be over. We will give them a few shots and it will be over.

... in 1950 a very large slice of the white South stood at the crossroads in its attitude toward its colored citizens and [was] psychologically capable of turning either way.

With Submarine, when I came out of school, people were so lovely and supportive. And you don't get that experience very often. It felt like a family on-set. So Submarine changed so much for me.