- When people think of a disease, they think of something that is degenerative and that will hurt you and kill you. Autism is not a disease. It is a developmental disability. It's about living our best possible lives with this condition. 

- I don't know. I always get that "you don't look autistic" thing. Autism is like an internal thing, not an external thing. No one looks autistic. 

- When people find that out, the first thing, they're like, you don't act autistic. And I'm like, I had to go through a lot of stuff to learn how to mask my idiosyncrasies. 

- Autism isn't a linear spectrum of high or low. It's a whole bunch of different traits that are on their own spectrums, that's kind of a 3D, weird mess. 

- Autism is simply a different way of thinking and seeing and interacting with one's world. I view autism as realness. 

- The words high functioning and low functioning are used by people, again, who are talking about autism from an outside point of view. So rather than using those labels, we tend to say minimal-support needs and high-support needs to describe the different kind of levels of the spectrum that people fall on. 

- I definitely would disagree with the idea that we're not emotional. I think we are actually highly emotional. I think that many times we don't express it the way that people expect. 

- I like the comparison to Vulcans. In Star Trek lore, the Vulcans feel more strongly than humans. They just don't show it. 

- We're feeling it. It's there. It just might not come out. And then other times it might be overly expressed. 

- Sometimes we'll cry. It might be at weird moments. Well, you might think they're weird. I don't think they're weird. 

- It can be so overwhelming, so intense that in order to function, you kind of have to be still or shut down a bit. 

- We can't filter them out because we feel them so strongly. So we shut down as a way of processing all those emotions. 

- It takes a lot of effort to appear the way I do right now. It takes a lot of conscious awareness. Social skills are like a muscle for us. 

- People will often say to me, oh, you're so high functioning. I would never know you had autism unless you said something. And I say, well, you don't live inside my skin. And you don't know how hard it is for me sometimes just to get through a day. 

- It's very, very draining. Even with people that I care for or enjoy being around, I have to psych myself up to be around them. 

- All the little things that everyone does unconsciously, autistic people do manually. So that adds up. What I'm doing with every part of my body I am to some degree aware of and trying to do. 

- A lot of women, women that I know who are autistic, are not diagnosed until their 20s, 30s, or even beyond. A large part of this is because the way that we diagnose autism is by using criteria that were created observing boys. And autism looks different in girls and women than it does in boys. 

- People don't expect to see someone that looks like me or my two youngest children who are on the spectrum also. We know that anyone can be on the spectrum. 

- I didn't become aware of Asperger's until I was already an adult. At the time, finding a doctor was really difficult because there were people that were like, oh, women don't have that. And then there were other people that were like, well, you're too high functioning. 

- I was in my early 30s when I was diagnosed myself, after my children were. I don't think I would have been otherwise. Women are under diagnosed, Black women especially. And I think there's also this idea of the strong Black woman. You kind of have to hold down the family and be able to just keep going and not address whatever needs that you have, your support needs, not prioritize self care. We just kind of slipped through the cracks through the majority of our lives. 

- I remember parent-teacher conferences of teachers telling my mom that I should be in special ed. I was an ideal homeschool candidate. There was something wrong with my brain. I remember that one. That was cool. 

- And now I feel a lot better. I feel like, OK, I know why I'm this way. I know why other people are the way they are. So I can bridge this gap. 

- You invite a girl back to your apartment to watch a movie, and she thinks you're just watching a movie. Netflix and chill doesn't literally mean Netflix and chill. That often does happen when you have someone who is inherently a little bit more naive because they're so literal. 

- When we think of people on the spectrum as not being interested in sex, not having any kind of sex drive or sexual interest-- and it's just not true. We just may need more support in order to learn how to make that happen. We don't naturally understand the nuances that are involved in this. And there are a lot of nuances. 

- There's a huge thing where people think that people on the spectrum, that they all don't have relationships. And if they do, that it doesn't even reach a sexual point. Having or not having those things does not determine whether one is on the spectrum or not. 

- Some of the ways that I show love that he might have thought were odd he now understands that it's just my love language, my way of communicating. And in a sense, he kind of serves as my interpreter to the neurotypical world. 

- Often autistic people don't get taught sex ed at all, let alone how to protect themselves in the real world from date rape. These are topics that often aren't taught to autistic teenagers because adults don't want to deal with it. 

- People on the autism spectrum, especially women, are more likely to experience sexual assault or some sort of violent incident than the neurotypical, nonautistic population. We are very vulnerable. We definitely can be more trusting because we are very honest and upfront people. So we don't think that other people might not be so honest and might be trying to hurt us. 

- One of the traits of autism is not reading between the lines in social interactions. And so much of dating and sexuality is supposed to be indirect and subtle and that it's like inappropriate to talk about sex in a direct way, even when you're teaching it as sex ed. Most of what they tested us on were like the mechanics and like, can you label the diagram? 

No one's teaching the social aspects. And honestly, this is where autistic people are the canaries in the coal mine. Teaching the social aspects of sexuality would help everyone. Autistic people need it, but it also benefits everyone. 

- There's the stereotype that everyone with autism is into science and math and stuff, like Rain Man. But a lot of people with autism, women actually, especially, a lot of us are into the arts. 

- My experience, autistic girls are also just as obsessive as autistic boys. They're just obsessed with fantasy novels or their favorite bands or whatever, not planes, trains, and automobiles. 

- But I'm more of a social science and literary person. And I've met a lot of other people on the spectrum who are into languages or music or art. And I think we thrive in some of those nontraditional areas. 

- I just sang at Carnegie Hall. I'm a writer. 

- I definitely started off with the interests of astronomy. I actually ended up being one of the Mars One finalists. But it tends to be a stereotype, and I did fall into that stereotype. 

- When I was younger and I had no outlet, nobody wanted to hear from me, and I felt that I couldn't be myself. So I turned to writing. 

- People picked on me for any number of things. And I didn't know why. I didn't know what it was that they saw that was different. Nobody would ever tell me that. It's like somebody making fun of a blind person. Only in this case, you're blind socially. 

- I felt broken. I felt strange. I felt different. Everything was so simple for other people. Everything they understood so easily that I couldn't understand, that I couldn't grasp or do. I just didn't understand what was so wrong with me. 

- The travails and difficulties I experienced with bullying and with being suicidal from a very young age. And I would say that we all start from somewhere, but that isn't necessarily where we're going to end up. And you have to believe that there is going to be a future. I didn't have that belief at that point. I didn't know that I was even going to have a future. 

- It's very difficult to go through many, many years, especially as a child, having no friends and no one willing to extend a hand out of friendship to you. 

- As I got older, high school, college afterwards, there's enough misfits in the world, like people who got picked on. There's so many of us. So you do find your tribe. 

- To finally have friends is such a big, big deal. 

- I think if that 10-year-old girl could see what her life was going to be now, she wouldn't believe it. She would think it was some fairy tail or something out of a movie. I can't believe it because it almost seems like a dream at times that I've gotten to where I am, that I have a master's degree, that I've started my own business. And I also can believe it because I work for it. And so I'm willing to give myself the credit that I think I deserve, which has always been something I've also struggled with. 

- I wish I could go back to that little [INAUDIBLE] and give her a hug and let her know that she was just fine the way she was and that she was going to be all right. 

- I think things are going to be a lot better for the next generation. I'm actually really hopeful. They are going to be diagnosing children more, and there is going to be more social acceptance. 

- Your kid might be behind their peers. But it doesn't mean they're going to be behind forever. Your kid is a full human being who will grow and change just like everyone else. 

- I would just love to see every autistic person living up to their fullest potential, whatever that is for them. Success is about your child growing up to be the best version of themselves that they can be, whoever and whatever that is.