There is a small segment of people with autism that have savant skills, where they can memorize entire maps of whole entire city. They can do calendar calculations. And this is similar to some of the skills that animals have.

There tends to be a lot of autism around the tech centers... when you concentrate the geeks, you're concentrating the autism genetics.

It is important that our relationship with farm animals is reciprocal. We owe animals a decent life and a painless death. I have observed that the people who are completely out of touch with nature are the most afraid of death.

In special education, there's too much emphasis placed on the deficit and not enough on the strength.

Children between the ages of five to ten years are even more variable. They are going to vary from very high functioning, capable of doing normal school work, to nonverbal who have all kinds of neurological problems.

One of the things I want to do is be a decent role model. I've got a lot of emails and stuff from children. They look up to me. Kids get different labels and things like that and I want those kids to succeed.

If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.