House Rules Quotes
"I’ve met so many parents of kids who are on the low end of the autism spectrum, kids who are diametrically opposed to Jacob, with his Asperger’s. They tell me I’m lucky to have a son who’s so verbal, who is blisteringly intelligent, who can take apart the broken microwave and have it working again an hour later."
"But try having a son who is locked in his own world and still wants to make a connection. A son who tries to be like everyone else but truly doesn’t know how."
"When he cannot find the words for how he feels, he borrows someone else’s."
"My biggest hope for Jacob is that moments like this won’t happen. My biggest fear: that they will, and I won’t always be there to keep people from thinking the worst of him."
"I am supposed to make exceptions for Jacob; it’s one of our unwritten house rules."
"In my mind, Asperger’s is a label to describe not the traits Jacob has but rather the ones he lost."
"If you met him now, the first thing you’d notice is that he might have forgotten to change his shirt from yesterday or to brush his hair."
"I used to call him my little genius, because even when he was small he’d spew forth an explanation like that one."
"Jacob lives in a literal world; it’s one of the hallmarks of his diagnosis."
"I don’t have any friends. The bullying started in kindergarten, when I got my glasses."
"For me, being in social situations is like moving to Lithuania when you haven’t studied Lithuanian."
"I have spent much of my eighteen years learning how to exist in a world that is occasionally orange, chaotic, and too loud."
"I don’t get into trouble because rules are what keep me sane."
"I’ve found that anger works best. It’s the electric shock they need to tear their gaze away from the train wreck."
"I’d like a friend with benefits, although I’d never admit that to my mother. I’d like a friend, period."
"Ask the mom of one autistic kid if vaccines had anything to do with her child’s condition, and she will vehemently tell you yes. Ask another, and she’ll just as vehemently tell you no."
"The truth is, we just don’t see this often enough in Townsend, Vermont, to make a quick judgment call."
"It’s all fun and games till somebody loses an eye."
"Because the word doesn’t mean the same thing in different situations, which is why I have never been able to figure it out with logic."
"Dogs are like the kids in school I cannot stand: the ones who hang around and then leave when they realize they are not getting what they want or need from the conversation."
"Real mothers admit it is easier to fail at this job than to succeed."
"The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one."
"It’s the spatial equivalent of knowing what’s coming next."
"Being on the other side of dead isn’t that different from having Asperger’s."
"If parenting is the box of raisin bran, then real mothers know the ratio of flakes to fun is severely imbalanced."
"All is fair in love, war, and interrogation."
"Real mothers worry that other mothers will find that magic ring, whereas they'll be looking and looking for ages."
"Like me, they’re very smart. And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone."
"This was my daughter's childhood, sealed in an envelope. How many chances would I have to hold on to a piece of her life?"
"All that stuff I just described. All of that just happened to your friend Jess. What do you think about that?"
"I wish I’d had the foresight to videotape this conversation instead of audiotaping it. If this kid’s demeanor isn’t a Hallmark card for guilt, frankly, I don’t know what is."
"Sometimes, you need someone else to help you take the first step."
"I’m guessing there will not be any other hits, but that doesn’t mean this is the first time Jacob’s acted out."
"That’s what haunts me at night. Not the dead bodies I find, but the live ones I leave in my wake."
"You just know that after they found out, they were never quite the same."
"Jacob’s eyes are shining; his mouth is bent into a smile. He’s been arrested for murder, yet he’s on cloud nine, because he’s gotten to see a LiveScan system up close and personal."
"I have never lived my life by shirking a challenge, and I’m not about to start right now."
"If you think having a brother who’s got Asperger’s makes me a pariah, imagine having one who’s in jail."
"Sometimes it’s okay to tell a little lie if it gets you to the truth in the long run."
"If someone touches me when I am not expecting it, I scream—not out of fear but because it sometimes feels like my nerve endings are on the outside rather than the inside."
"Having Asperger’s is like having the volume of life at full blast all the time."
"I know what it means. It means that a person isn’t responsible for criminal conduct if, as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacked the capacity to understand right from wrong at the moment the act was committed."
"I would have rather had a kid who doesn’t struggle so hard, who could make his way in the world with less resistance? No, because that child wouldn’t have been Jacob."
"You can’t use movie quotes in a courtroom to say what happened...But you can use a lawyer."
"The whole time I’m thinking, 'This is so fake.' If you’re wrong about something, I will correct you—not because I want to make you feel bad but because facts are very important to me, more important than people are."
"For a while, it worked. And then my brother figured out I wasn’t gifted with extrasensory perception. I was just strange."
"There’s a difference between being socially awkward and being clinically diagnosed with Asperger’s."
"I think you're the only person who gets me. When I'm with you, the world doesn't feel like a problem I can't figure out. Please come to the dance because you're my music."
"Jacob doesn’t just get ten hours of justice. He gets as much justice as he needs. That’s the whole purpose of the constitutional system."
"I am a prairie vole, trapped in the body of a montane vole."
"The brain of a person in love doesn’t look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion. It looks like the brain of a person who’s been snorting coke."
"I hated Mark Maguire before I even laid eyes on him."
"You are aware, Mr. Maguire, that the autopsy revealed bruises around Jess Ogilvy’s neck, as well as on her upper arms?"
"I don’t want to hear it," I interrupt, covering my ears.
"When I left her," he says, "she looked like an angel."