I think that everybody wants to be heard, and the easiest way to be the loudest is to be the hater.
It brings me no joy and not enough comfort to dwell too much on things I've said or written or made or worn in the past.
Who do you think made the first stone spears? The Asperger guy. If you were to get rid of all the autism genetics, there would be no more Silicon Valley.
Some people with autism who don't talk, all they hear are vowel sounds. Like if I said 'cup,' they might just hear 'uh.'
Research has shown that a barren environment is much more damaging to baby animals than it is to adult animals. It does not hurt the adult animals the same way it damages babies.
What I've tried to do is combine both my personal experiences with scientific research. I like to cross the divide between the personal world and the scientific world.
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.
One big question that's come up is: Has autism increased on the mild side of things? I don't think so - they've always been here. Some of this is increased detection.
I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.
But I think my mistakes became the chemistry for my miracles. I think that my tests became my testimonies.
I think most people who get into their 50s reassess what made sense and what didn't make sense.
We develop our propensity to forgive or not to forgive by what we see illustrated at the early ages of our development.
Healthcare reform is a paradigmatic case. It is self-evidently necessary and inevitable and has been on the agenda for 35 years, and the political class seems completely unable to respond to it.
There is nothing to be said for being crippled. You don't see the world better or clearer, nor do you develop some special set of skills by way of compensation.
Judaism for me is a sensibility of collective self-questioning and uncomfortable truth-telling. I feel a debt of responsibility to this past. It is why I am Jewish.
Obviously a primary liberal conviction is that we should be tolerant of other peoples' convictions. But if we believe in something, we had better find ways to say so convincingly.
I think if I'm controversial it's not because I set out to be. It's because I've never felt comfortable being part of someone else's mainstream community.
For Europe to play a part in the world on the scale of its wealth and its population and its capacities, Europe has to be united in some way, and Europe is not united.
They know what my standards are. They know what I need and how to get it to me, and they know how to communicate with me if for some reason they can't get it.
Whether it's destiny or fate or whatever, I don't think I could do a French Laundry anywhere else.
What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people live their lives.
