Mark Zuckerberg is a genius. Not in the Asperger's, autistic way depicted in the very fictional movie 'The Social' Network, the cognitive genius of exceptional ability. That's a modern definition that reduces the original meaning.
Antonio Garcia Martinez
I did a film, 'X+Y', in which I played somebody on the autistic spectrum. It's a subject I didn't know very much about, but being an actor gives yourself the opportunity to really immerse yourself in that world and learn things. It's one of the great things about what I do.
Asa Butterfield
Christians need to take the lead in educating people that children are gifts, as my autistic grandson most surely is. By going down the path we're currently on, we might one day get rid of genetic diseases, but only at the cost of our own humanity.
Charles Colson
Most people assume that autistic people are not capable of empathy.
Claire Danes
I sometimes think I might be autistic because I like to know - I need to know - my beginnings and my ends. I don't have to be in control of it, but I need to know what's going on.
Clay Aiken
Looking ahead, future generations may learn their social skills from robots in the first place. The cute yellow Keepon robot from Carnegie Mellon University has shown the ability to facilitate social interactions with autistic children. Morphy at the University of Washington happily teaches gestures to children by demonstration.
Daniel H. Wilson
Unless one is planning to go shopping - basically begging to be smothered by the ravening throngs of returners and bargain hunters; an embrace as constricting as that hugging machine designed by autistic author Temple Grandin - then Boxing Day feels like a bar after last call when the lights have been turned up.
David Rakoff
You go into another time zone when you are a parent of an autistic child, where any micro movement in a positive direction is such a cause for celebration.
Didi Conn
We all want our children to be the best they can be; and one of the blessings of having an autistic child is that you notice every little achievement, and it becomes cause for celebration.
I connect fashion to other peoples' elegance, but not my own. I don't think I've ever felt elegant. I've felt appropriate, but never elegant, and I wonder what that must be like. I like it when other people are elegant - I prefer it - but I can't do it myself. I honestly think it's some form of autistic disorder.
Douglas Coupland
I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange. They keep saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all. And yet they just carry on like before.
Greta Thunburg
Mom worked with autistic children.
Isabel Lucas
It took 24 years for me to harness my autistic traits into something useful, and I have grown to regard them as a kind of superpower. Cooking, to me, is akin to algebra, and my mind a pocket calculator.
Jack Monroe
And I'm autistic, which means I can be hyperfocused but also all over the place at the same time. I think I'm very lucky to have found cooking because it's the one area where a brain like mine really thrives.
I used to work with autistic children, and they said a lot of funny things to me.
James Acaster
Certainly not everybody that is different is necessarily autistic, but there are a lot of undiagnosed people, and it's not necessarily something that needs to have attention to it, unless that person is feeling uncomfortable in the world or they need extra help or something.
Jasika Nicole
For a seriously autistic kid, the best prognosis might be getting into a mainstream school without being too much of a shadow. For a moderately autistic kid the best prognosis is full recovery.
Jenny McCarthy
It's absolutely imperative for the parents and the typical kids to have time by themselves, to go out to dinner or even go on vacation while someone else cares for the autistic child.
At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.
I sometimes think that I might be slightly autistic. There might be a syndrome that hasn't been named. I don't seem to see the world in the same way that most people I know see it. They don't seem to be baffled by it.
John Banville
My son was autistic, and he suffered from seizure disorder every 5 to 10 days. He would suffer a seizure that would last 45 seconds to a minute and sleep for 12 hours.
One in 150 kids is autistic these days. The autism spectrum is growing.
Compared to the challenges or raising an autistic child, weightlifting is a relief.
I'm glad Carol Vorderman has left 'Countdown;' I mean, it's not like she did much. She was effectively just an autistic shelf-stacker.
My biggest challenge is my severely autistic son.
My little brother is autistic, so I would love to be involved in a charity for autism, but I haven't found the right one yet.
With the right support and reasonable adjustments, autistic people make wonderful employees.
Autistic peoples' excellent attention to detail means they may make fewer mistakes, and their narrow focus may mean that they are not satisfied until a task is completed.
If you have high-functioning autism, you may well have a lot of autistic traits but if you've got a particular lifestyle where it's possibly an advantage to be leading a solitary lifestyle and be quite obsessive, you're clearly able to function and maybe even make valuable contributions in your work, so arguably you don't need a diagnosis.
I'm hoping that autism is going to get to that same point, where it becomes quite ordinary to say, 'I have autism,' or 'I have Asperger's syndrome,' and that there will be many more resources available to make life easier for people on the autistic spectrum.
Autistic people's disabilities are widely known, but one of their best-established strengths is their attention to detail.
Like any skill, systemising occurs on a bell curve in the population, with some people being faster at spotting patterns than others. Autistic people are often strong systemisers. Indeed their attention is often described as 'obsessive' as they check and recheck the patterns of a system.
We had a severely autistic kid in my class, and I was always picked last in gym class, even after him. Naturally, that made me feel pretty bad as an eight-year-old.
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.
Normal people have an incredible lack of empathy. They have good emotional empathy, but they don't have much empathy for the autistic kid who is screaming at the baseball game because he can't stand the sensory overload. Or the autistic kid having a meltdown in the school cafeteria because there's too much stimulation.
Some teachers just have a knack for working with autistic children. Other teachers do not have it.
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.
It's very important for the parents of young autistic children to encourage them to talk, or for those that don't talk, to give them a way of communicating, like a picture board, where they can point to a glass of milk, or a jacket if they're cold, or the bathroom. If they want something, then they need to learn to request that thing.
You have got to keep autistic children engaged with the world. You cannot let them tune out.
As you may know, some of the stereotyped behaviors exhibited by autistic children are also found in zoo animals who are raised in a barren environment.
I know a number of autistic adults that are doing extremely well on Prozac.
It's very important for the parents of young autistic children to encourage them to talk, or for those that don't talk, to give them a way of communicating, like a picture board, where they can point to a glass of milk, or a jacket if they're cold, or the bathroom.
Some autistic children cannot stand the sound of certain voices. I have come across cases where teachers tell me that certain children have problems with their voice or another person's voice. This problem tends to be related to high-pitched ladies' voices.
I think that autistic brains tend to be specialized brains. Autistic people tend to be less social. It takes a ton of processor space in the brain to have all the social circuits.
It's much more work for the mother of an autistic child to have a job, because working with an autistic child is such a hassle until they go to school.
Autistic children are very difficult to take care of, especially severely autistic ones. When I was 4, I had almost no language; when I was 3, I had none at all.
Autistic children are extremely bright if you can connect to them and bring them into our world. Socially it's really hard for them, but it can happen.
