Look Me In The Eye: My Life With Asperger's Quotes
"I loved him and I hated him, in equal measure."
"Aren’t there any proper books for these people?"
"A few days later, he sent me an essay about our father, about visiting him in the hospital as he lay dying, and the memories—most of them dark—that arose from the past."
"I knew he had a story to tell, I thought, but where the hell did that come from?"
"I can still remember the taste of Lincoln Logs."
"I would ramble on about stuff nobody understood."
"I had no idea Doug was dead until years later."
"I felt safe around animals, most of the time."
"Most of the time, I played by myself, with my toys."
"My days of hiding in the corner or crawling under a rock are over."
"He got me into the labs in Engineering East, the university’s engineering building, and introduced me to the brand-new Research Computing Center."
"They adopted me as a pet in the engineering labs."
"My mother suggested that I go see Professor Edwards, the husband of a friend."
"Then I began nosing around the university and learning what I could on my own."
"I tried it out on the dog, who ran and hid. That was no fun."
"No one knows why one person has a gift like this and another doesn’t."
"I spent my free evenings at local concerts, and became part of the scene."
"We had been seeing Dr. Finch for a while now, and my father certainly treated me better."
"But I ran into a roadblock: The college engineering textbooks used equations to describe how things worked, but I didn’t understand the math."
"I tried playing the French horn with no success."
"My earlier problems with math texts stopped holding me back as I developed the ability to visualize and even hear the flow of sounds through my circuits."
"I also began experimenting with transistorized circuits."
"I was a terrible bass player, though. I could hear the songs in my mind. I could read the music."
"In those days, reverb and tremolo were the only effects available to most musicians."
"I practiced all summer, playing along with the radio and studying my sheet music."
"It was hard to object to even his most dubious techniques, though, because he and his family were always really nice to me."
"Dr. Finch was in some ways the least predictable variable in the whole equation."
"For the first time in my life, I was able to do something that grown-ups thought was valuable."
"I had never heard of anyone in New England coming down with malaria."
"He thought I had already learned enough to skip Electronics I and go directly to Electronics II."
"I discovered I could solder some stiff wires onto a capacitor and charge it up."
"I had first become interested in music in the fifth grade."
"As my sixteenth birthday approached, I found myself spending less time in school and more time hanging around bars with local bands."
"To my grandfather Jack, it seemed pretty black and white."
"When I was in tenth grade, I heard the increasingly unwelcome 'specimen in a jar' crack one time too often from my English teacher, Mrs. Crowley."
"We didn’t have many family activities in those days."
"The terrifying threat of mental collapse followed me long into adulthood."
"I went into the front yard and started going at it."
"I hadn’t hit rock in Georgia. That was just one more reason it was nicer down there."
"It was nice living in the Shutesbury woods with my friend Paul, but anytime I wanted to go to town I faced a six-mile walk."
"I wouldn’t hesitate at all to walk up to a sound man at a concert. But I was still terrified of walking up to a girl."
"When I opened my door and that snake was there, waiting to bite me. So I shot him."
"I watched the girls in dresses, girls in skirts, girls with hardly any clothes at all."
"You could tell when Ace lit the smoking guitar just by listening to the audience. They loved it."
"It was like magic, how it’s all come together, though you don’t think of it as magic because you understand how every single piece works."
"I knew everything there was to know about lighting the dance floor and lighting the people, but the people themselves remained a mystery to me."
"I don’t know if it’s an Aspergian trait, or if it’s just me, but I was never affected by celebrity."
"I was too shy to ask anyone to dance, and too self-conscious to accept if anyone asked me."
"I had never made special effects before, but they didn’t know that, and I wasn’t going to tell them."
"I realized something was up. He must want me to buy him something."
"I opened my door and almost stepped on a large black water moccasin sunning himself on the concrete patio."
"I could not imagine myself doing any of those things. I didn’t even know what most of them were."
"It didn’t matter where I created those things. What mattered was that I had done it."
"Once I got going on that topic, I didn’t stop."
"I couldn’t believe it at first. Then I felt proud, and also scared."
"I wasn’t very good at reading people’s expressions, but I knew people smiled when they were happy."
"Our group was designing the first talking toys, and Klaus assigned me to work on an analog-to-digital converter he had been developing."
"I realized that my coworkers had no idea how lucky they were. They took it all for granted."
"I believe there is a continuum from autism to Asperger’s to normal."
"I had started out as an engineer, making $25,000 a year. Ten years later, my job was managing people and projects."
"Calm and docile animal. Calm and docile animal. Calm and docile animal."
"Santa runs a container crane at Europoort, in Rotterdam. He works all day unloading ships."
"I always figured I’d be better off solving a problem as opposed to taking medication to forget I had a problem."
"I was always careful to display little sign of interest lest the girl ridicule me."
"My asthma was aggravated by stress in those days, and it started acting up. I could hardly walk."
"I realized he was right. It did fit me. Completely."
"The realization was staggering. There are other people like me."
"The only days I could count on his calling were my birthday and Christmas."
"You’re as much a part of this school as any other alumnus."
"The answer to 'Why won’t you look me in the eye, young man?' was right there in the book."
"I never felt legitimate. Now, with my understanding of my Asperger’s, those negative feelings are in large measure gone."
"I have moved from being weird to being eccentric."
"I’ve talked about feeling like a fraud, waiting to be found out and thrown on the rubbish pile of humanity."
"I have taught myself to remember what’s happening with people close to my friends."
"I learned to pause before responding when people approach me and begin speaking."
"I felt like a fraud because I could not do anything in the normal way."