Quotes from John Elder Robison

Building up a weakness just makes you less disabled. Building a strength can take you to the top of the world.

Simply making myself aware of others has remarkably improved my social life. People accept me much faster now that I ignore them less.

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'treally understand why it's considered normal to stare at someone's eyeballs.

In the past, when people criticized me for asking unexpected questions, I felt ashamed. Now I realize that normal people are acting in a superficial and often false manner. So rather than let them make me feel bad, I express my annoyance. It's my way of trying to strike a blow for logic and rationality.

I don't really understsand why it's considered normal to stare at someone's eyeballs

Unlike some older brothers, I never set him on fire, or cut off an arm or leg, or drowned him in the tub.

It does not matter what sixty-six percent of people do in any particular situation. All that matters is what you do.

Asperger's is not a disease. It's a way of being. There is no cure, nor is there a need for one. There is, however, a need for knowledge and adaptation on the part of Aspergian kids and their families and friends.

We began reading books together. He loved Dr. Seuss. I read those books so often I could turn the pages and say the words from memory. I became bored with repetition, and I began to make subtle alterations. The story turned into: One fish Two fish Black fish Blue fish I eat you fish And: See them all See them run The man in back He has a gun

Simply making myself aware of others has remarkably improved my social life. People accept me much faster now that I ignore them less.

I used to fear barking dogs. I would cringe and say to myself, 'Nice doggie please don't bite me I'll just go away,' but by that night I could look at them and think, I am your worst nightmare. Come closer and I will impale you upon my stick. The more I firmly visualized it, the more the dogs believed it. Now the tables had turned. Now the dogs feared me.

As I've gotten older, I have taught myself to act "normal." I can do it well enough to fool the average person for a whole evening, maybe longer. But it all falls apart if I hear something that elicits a strong emotional reaction from me that is different from what people expect. In an instant, in their eyes, I turn into the sociopathic killer I was believed to be forty years ago.

I needed to stop forcing myself to fit into something I could never be a part of.

And my experience in the music scene had shown me that there were places for places in the world where misfits were welcome.

They enrolled me in a group for troubled kids. We would meet each week in an old farmhouse owned by the university and talk about our problems getting along. . . . . They didn't teach me to get along, but I did learn that there were plenty of other kids who couldn't get along any better than me. That in itself was encouraging. I realized that I was not the bottom of the barrel. Or if I was, the bottom was roomy because there were a lot of us down there.

I am sure antidepressants, drugs, and liquor have their place. But so far, that place is in others, not me.

I tried to show him things, but he didn't seem to study what I showed him. Usually, he just put whatever I handed him in his mouth. He would try to eat anything. I fed him Tabasco sauce and he yelled. Having a little brother helped me learn to relate to other people. Being a little brother, Snort learned to watch what he put in his mouth.

When we pulled in, the customs officer looked in the back. The back of the wagon was filled with cases stenciled PINK FLOYD--LONDON. 'Got Pink Floyd in the back of the car, do you?' he asked. 'Righto, mate. We shrunk 'em and stuck 'em in fookin' boxes, we did,' said Nigel. Amazingly, the customs officer laughed and waved us through.

It must be my logical consideration of a decision many see as purely intuitive or emotional that throws other people for a loop.

Sociopath" and "psycho" were two of the most common field diagnoses for my look and expression. I heard it all the time: "I've read about people like you. They have no expression because they have no feeling. Some of the worst murderers in history were sociopaths.

This is a f***ing mess," I said tactfully.

I knew I was some kind of misfit, but it was becoming apparent that some of the grown-ups who smiled sweetly and told me how terrible and fucked-up I was were complete fuckups themselves.

delineated with signs reading: TOWN OF AMHERST WATERSHED NO TRESPASSING Which every boy in the neighborhood understood as: PRIVATE PRESERVE FOR KIDS

The hard part was living the contrast between being rich and being broke. It was like being smart, and waking up one day to find yourself dumb as a rock, but able to remember your former brains.