20 Great Quotes About Autism From Autistic People

The Art of Autism has been soliciting quotes from the autism community for quite a while now. We do this through our blogs and our Facebook page. Here are some of our favorite quotes about autism from people on the autism spectrum. The quotes explain how each and every person with autism is an individual and may perceive the world in different ways than neurotypical people. Most autistic people, as Jeanette Purkis states, want to be “respected and validated.”

1. “Autistic people are individuals. We are not all maths geniuses, we don’t all like trains. I am hopeless with technology and much prefer painting. There is no ‘typical Autistic.’ But I think we probably all like being respected and validated.” — Jeanette Purkis

2. “I may hit developmental and societal milestones in a different order than my peers, but I am able to accomplish these small victories on my own time.” — Haley Moss

3. “I see everything in color. I have synesthesia, which means that the part of my brain – that controls the senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste – are wired differently.” — Jeremy Sicile-Kira

4. “As an autistic I can readily see environmental phenomena of sun particles interacting with moisture in the air and rising up from the ground. I thought of these things I could see as sun sparkles and world tails.” — Judy Endow

5. “My autism makes things shine. Sometimes I think it is amazing but sometimes it is sad when I want to be the same and talk the same and I fail. Playing the piano makes me very happy. Playing Beethoven is like your feelings – all of them – exploding.” — Artist Mikey Allcock

6. “Are your eyes listening? That’s what needs to happen to hear my writing voice. Because of autism, the thief of politeness and friendship, I have no sounding voice. By typing words I can play with my life and stretch from my world to yours. I become a real person when my words try to reach out to you without my weird body scaring you away. Then I am alive.” — Sarah Stup, excerpted from “Are your eyes listening? Collected Works”

7. “And now I know it is perfectly natural for me not to look at someone when I talk. Those of us with Asperger’s are just not comfortable doing it. In fact, I don’t really understand why it’s considered normal to stare at someone’s eyeballs.” — John Elder Robison

8. “I always find it kind of funny that normal people are always saying autistic children ‘live in their own little world.’ When you work with animals for a while you start to realize you can say the same thing about normal people. There’s a great big, beautiful world out there that a lot of normal folks are just barely taking in. Autistic people and animals are seeing a whole register of the visual world normal people can’t, or don’t.” — Temple Grandin

9. “Showing kindness towards those who are different and embracing our imperfections as proof of our humanness is the remedy for fear.” — Emma Zurcher-Long

10. “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” — Dr. Stephen Mark Shore

11. “I view ‘autistic’ as a word for a part of how my brain works, not for a narrow set of behaviors and certainly not for a set of boundaries of a stereotype that I have to stay inside.” — Amanda Baggs

12. “Why should I cry for not being an apple, when I was born an orange, I’d be crying for an illusion, I may as well cry for not being a horse.” — Donna Williams

13. “My autism is the reason I’m in college and successful. It’s the reason I’m good in math and science. It’s the reason I care.” — Jacob Barnett, teen math and physics prodigy.

14. “Traveling in other countries is especially fun because others often attribute your differences to the less-stigmatizing idea that you’re like this only because you’re a foreigner.” — Michael John Carly

15. “My autism is like the taste of tepid saké, different but interesting.” — Sue Rubin

16. “Why do non-autistic people have hobbies and interests but autistic people have obsessions?” — Tina J. Richardson

17. “Our wounds and hurts and fears are in our eyes. Humans think they build ‘walls’ for internal privacy. They think eye contact is about honesty but they mostly lie because they think they can hide their intent. Eye contact is invasive.” — Carol Ann Edscorn

18. “Although people with autism look like other people physically, we are in fact very different… 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 might give us quiet pleasure.” — Naoki Higashida, “The Reason I Jump”

19. “When doctors, parents, teachers, therapists, even television describe typical spectrum kids, without meaning to, they’re describing typically male spectrum traits — patterns first noticed by observing boys. Only boys. And we aren’t boys. So they miss and mislabel us.” — Jennifer O’Toole, “Asperkids”

20. “I know of nobody who is purely autistic or purely neurotypical. Even God had some autistic moments, which is why the planets all spin.” — Jerry Newport

The Art of Autism’s vision  is to empower and connect individuals within the autism community through participation in the Arts. We do this in many ways through art exhibits, blogs, films, poetry readings, and participation in our projects.