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Normal people have an incredible lack of empathy. They have good emotional empathy, but they don't have much empathy for the autistic kid who is screaming at the baseball game because he can't stand the sensory overload. Or the autistic kid having a meltdown in the school cafeteria because there's too much stimulation.

Certainly not everybody that is different is necessarily autistic, but there are a lot of undiagnosed people, and it's not necessarily something that needs to have attention to it, unless that person is feeling uncomfortable in the world or they need extra help or something.

Empathy has some unfortunate features - it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it.

I think that autistic brains tend to be specialized brains. Autistic people tend to be less social. It takes a ton of processor space in the brain to have all the social circuits.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done.

People think about autism as something with kids. Well, those kids grow up.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.

Autism is part of who I am.

Some teachers just have a knack for working with autistic children. Other teachers do not have it.