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1 " The one blanket statement that I can make about autism is that there is no blanket statement to be made about autism. "
― Jory Fleming , How to Be Human: An Autistic Man's Guide to Life
2 " Most people don’t like neutral. They want you to have an opinion. And I’ve always been of the mind that opinions are only useful if you’re willing to change them very rapidly. I feel like the stronger your opinion, the weaker you should hold it. "
3 " A central struggle was any type of sequential direction: “Telling him to go to the laundry room and turn the light on, we might get one of those things done. For a long time until well into the teenage years, I couldn’t give him more than one instruction at a time. "
4 " LW: What do you like to talk about? JORY: One thing I don’t like is small talk. I don’t like to talk about the weather; I like to talk about nerdy, intellectual stuff. I’m a big news follower, so any news of the day will interest me. But I’ve found conversations about people’s backgrounds or why they think the way they do based on their prior experiences to be very interesting. What differentiates those things from small talk is that there is some value being shared. It doesn’t have to be vulnerable or personally revealing. But I feel like it’s a different kind of conversation because you walk away from that learning something. "
5 " I generally find a wide range of people pretty interesting as long as they meet the basic criteria of not being a terrible person and talking at least some of the time about something other than the weather or what they ate for breakfast. "
6 " Having autism as opposed to being neurotypical isn't a huge irritation. It's more like every now and again, you are reminded that everyone else gets the burger or chocolate cake. "
7 " Who knows how much of the world's knowledge is locked up in manuals that nobody's thought to read. "
8 " Critical thinking is often very uncomfortable, at least in my opinion. You have to reevaluate yourself, which means that, heaven forbid, you might be wrong sometimes. Most people don't like neutral. They want you to have an opinion. And I've always been of the mind that opinions are only useful if you're willing to change them very rapidly. I feel like the stronger your opinion, the weaker you should hold it. "
