When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think.

Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.

Aesthetic judgments, rather than abstract reasoning, guide and shape the process by which we all come to know what we know.

You don't have to be disabled to be different, because everybody's different.

I consider social skills a bit like learning a language. I've been practising it for so long over so many years I've almost lost my accent.

My autism is a very mild form. It was diagnosed at the age of 25, partly because it wasn't diagnosable as a teenager (this is Asperger's syndrome, specifically). But there were certainly traits within that condition, within the autism spectrum in general, especially at the high functioning end, that I think are best looked at as pluses.

I changed my name because it didn't fit with the way I saw myself.