The people that were socially awkward from my generation, they all had paper routes and that taught them the discipline of work.

You have to get autistic kids out and expose them to things, but do this without any surprises, so they know what to expect. You have to find skilled mentors to teach them things. For me, it was an aunt, and it was my science teacher. You need to find the things they're interested in and good at and expand on this.

Autism is an extremely variable disorder.

I'm seeing too many kind of socially awkward kids that get through schools and then they can't hold a job because they haven't learned the discipline of get up in the morning.

One thing I'd like to just keep on doing is I want to educate people about animal behavior and about autism. I've been doing autism talks for the last 20 years and there still are people out there that do not want to, they can't recognize that these sensory problems are real. That, for some of these kids when that fire alarm goes off, that really hurts the ears, it's a really real thing.

A cat can be social, but a dog, we've bred this hyper social animal that's really truly different and will do stuff for us just to please us with praise and stroking.

My life is basically my work.