"Brains come in different types and they're all normal." — Simon Baron-Cohen

In the person with autism, the brain may already be seeing the part and be less distracted by the whole, and in the person without autism the brain may have to set aside its picture of the whole to analyze the detail.

People with autism flourish in domains where the information is consistent and predictable, and struggle most in domains where the information is ambiguous and unlawful.

I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil.' We've inherited this word... and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't think it's anything more than another word for doing something bad.

Difficulty empathising translates into a whole set of hurdles. You might be last person to get the point of a joke, which can leave you feeling like an outsider. You might end up saying something that another person finds hurtful or offensive, when that was the last thing you intended.

It is possible that by studying autism we'll learn about the nature of talent. Supposedly there's no connection between scientific talent and autism, but if we look closely, we find a very basic connection.

Autism typically means a person may not be fully aware of the consequences of their actions, or understand the consequences of their behaviour on others.

If we think about the autism spectrum as involving a very strong drive to systemize, that can have very positive consequences for the individual and for society. The downside is that when you try to systemize certain parts of the world like people and emotions, those sorts of phenomena are less lawful and harder to systemize.

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Brains come in different types and they're all normal.