Alex touches her arm. "You look nice." "Nice?" she repeats. "Try harder, Alex." He flushes adorably. "Really nice," he says. "Next time, try this," Harry says. He reaches for my hand. "Franny, I didn't know what beauty was until I saw you walking toward us a minute ago. "I like this better," I say, pulling away. "At least he sounded like he meant it." "I meant it," Harry says, almost irritably.

No one's family is normal. Normalcy is a lie invented by advertising agencies to make the rest of us feel inferior.

He was wearing a plain white oxford unbuttoned over a T-shirt, but something about the way they fit made him look put together, like an Abercrombie model (well, like an Abercrombie model who had remembered to put on a shirt that morning).

Don't think that there's a different, better child 'hiding' behind the autism. This is your child. Love the child in front of you. Encourage his strengths, celebrate his quirks, and improve his weaknesses, the way you would with any child.

Juliana's a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger - mostly because she's the opposite of cynical and I'm the opposite of the opposite of cynical.

I got lost in him, and it was the kind of lost that's exactly like being found.

For a long time our son ws a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.