People on the autism spectrum don't think the same way you do. In my life, people who made a difference were those who didn't see labels, who believed in building on what was there. These were people who didn't try to drag me into their world, but came into mine instead.

Lets get into talking about how autism is similar animal behavior. The thing is I dont think in a language, and animals dont think in a language. Its sensory based thinking, thinking in pictures, thinking in smells, thinking in touches. Its putting these sensory based memories into categories.

The most important thing people did for me was to expose me to new things.

In fact, there are autism clusters, you know, around some of the big tech centers. You take two socially awkward computer programmers and put them together, that can kind of concentrate the autistic genes.

When you take a drug to treat high blood pressure or diabetes, you have an objective test to measure blood pressure and the amount of sugar in the blood. It is straight-forward. With autism, you are looking for changes in behavior.

The world needs different kinds of minds to work together.

I think sometimes parents and teachers fail to stretch kids. My mother had a very good sense of how to stretch me just slightly outside my comfort zone.