If language naturally evolves to serve the needs of tiny rodents with tiny rodent brains, then what's unique about language isn't the brilliant humans who invented it to communicate high-level abstract thoughts. What's unique about language is that the creatures who develop it are highly vulnerable to being eaten.

I can remember being bullied and teased. It was absolutely horrible. I got kicked out of ninth grade for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. It was absolutely terrible.

A real common problem with a lot of animals is that guys are bad, hate to say it, but they will tune into some big feature like the glasses, maybe the beard, baseball hats, you know some unique feature like that. And they'll generalize like, "Okay! All people with baseball hats or black rimmed glasses are bad."

If I did not have my work, I would not have any life.

The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic, because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave. It's like being in a play; I'm always in a play.

People on the autistic spectrum tend to get fixated on what they think.

I was nonverbal until I was four years old. Back in the 50s, I was the kind of kid they used to just put away in an institution. But then you get the milder autism where there's no speech delay, but they're socially awkward. Those kids were around when I was a child. They were just called geeks and nerds.