Top 35 Elle McNicoll Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I live my life desperately trying to make other people feel at ease. To show them I’m normal. That I can be just like everyone else. And on days like today, when I fail, I hate myself. More than anyone else can hate me.”

— Elle McNicoll

2. “Walking a lonely path by yourself, one that no one else has walked before, is only scary before you begin. Once you’re walking the road, you just have to make sure that you never glance back. Never let people’s incredulity, their judgement, their doubt or hate creep in.”

— Elle McNicoll

3. “I have every right to be here. As me. Exactly as I am. I might be different to you, I might be different to every person in this room, but you have no more of a right to exist than I do. You don’t get to pick and choose which bits of me are fine. All of me is fine.”

— Elle McNicoll

4. “If they don’t see it’s wrong, if they don’t say it’s wrong, it can happen again. It could happen to you; it could happen to me.”

— Elle McNicoll

5. “Grief is like rain. When you’re standing in the street, drenched and freezing cold, it’s hard to remember what it’s like to feel warm and dry. It’s hard to imagine feeling warm and dry ever again. But some people are umbrellas. And they keep away the worst of the storm.”

— Elle McNicoll

6. “Some people are like trees. The wind can blow and blow, they’ll never move. They’ll always be there.”

— Elle McNicoll

7. “Neurotypical people,” Keedie sighs, finally looking at me with a grin. “So lacking in empathy. It’s terribly sad.”

— Elle McNicoll

8. “Whatever goes on inside that box with other people, I don’t understand it. I always feel like everyone else has been sent pages and pages of instructions, tips and tricks to life and how to move smoothly. I’m always a few steps behind. I can read a book in a day, memorize anything, feel so strongly. But the doublespeak and the secret looks. I’m not sure I’ll ever decipher them.”

— Elle McNicoll

9. “While you are neurotypical and I am autistic, I promise we are more alike than we are different.”

— Elle McNicoll

10. “My Grandpa always said, people like me in the past might not have been the most sociable. Or the chattiest. But while everyone else was around the fireplace gossiping, we were out finding electricity. That’s what my autism is. It’s a kind of spark. It’s like sharks, you see.”

— Elle McNicoll

11. “It’s not my brain that makes me break down. It’s the pretending. The hiding. The way the world isn’t built for us.”

— Elle McNicoll

12. “I know I’m going to keep trying. I know I can keep trying, even when they tell me I can’t. I will decide when to give up.”

— Elle McNicoll

13. “People aren’t like books. A familiar book is always the same, always comforting and full of the same words and pictures. A familiar person can be new and challenging, no matter how many times you try to read them.”

— Elle McNicoll

14. “You shouldn’t listen to people who shout and say nasty things on the internet. They’re the lowest of the low. You should care about what you think.”

— Elle McNicoll

15. “Autistic people have probably done so much for hundreds of years without any credit.”

— Elle McNicoll

16. “No horrible, awful, rubbish day is worth damaging a library book.”

— Elle McNicoll

17. “I will not let people use my difference as a stick to beat me with. I imagine throwing that stick into the river. Watching it disappear and float away.”

— Elle McNicoll

18. “I try to imagine Jean. Tired and sullen, just wanting to be left alone. I can see people deliberately stepping into her path, telling her over and over again to smile, to be pleasant.”

— Elle McNicoll

19. “It’s better to be open about who you really are, what you’re really like, and be disliked by a few than it is to hide who you are and be tolerated by many.”

— Elle McNicoll

20. “Books are not medicine, they are food. You won’t remember every bite but you will remember the taste.”

— Elle McNicoll

21. “Someone being autistic is no different from someone being left-handed or color-blind. It means we experience the world differently. And while some people might misunderstand it, I know that it is just part of who I am. I can’t be cured. I don’t want to be. It’s just a fact of my life.”

— Elle McNicoll

22. “Grief is just love asking for more time.”

— Elle McNicoll

23. “I spend every moment of my life, when I am outside our family home, second-guessing everything that I do. I study people’s faces to make sure that they are accepting what I am saying, that they are never confused or offended. I make myself smaller. I shrink away, eyes downcast and hand outstretched. For a crumb of sympathy.”

— Elle McNicoll

24. “When grown-ups don’t like what we have to say, they blame our autism and say we don’t know our own minds.”

— Elle McNicoll

25. “Wherever the pieces of me go, I know who I am. I know the fragments that need to return will always find a way back, and that what is most important will never be gone. I’ll be fine.”

— Elle McNicoll

26. “People make sounds of disgust, which sparks anger in me. How can they sit here and be more displeased by me telling the truth, than by the truth itself?”

— Elle McNicoll

27. “I leap back from the tree, as if I’ve been shocked by a spark. I breathe heavily, staring up at it. It seems less frightening. Less powerful.”

— Elle McNicoll

28. “I’m surprised by her consideration. People don’t normally think about how to make things less difficult for me.”

— Elle McNicoll

29. “I think different is good. As long as you’re not hurting anyone. We need all kinds of difference in the world.”

— Elle McNicoll

30. “The minute you find out what makes you different, the minute you love it and accept it and say you wouldn’t change who you are, that’s when you become dangerous.”

— Elle McNicoll

31. “People’s minds are all so different. All capable of different things.”

— Elle McNicoll

32. “When you’re... different, your processing is a little unique. The hands have a bit of trouble doing exactly what the brain wants. They’re so busy getting the words exactly right, and in the right order, that they don’t have time to get the writing perfect or pretty.”

— Elle McNicoll

33. “It’s so confusing. To be too much for some people and not enough for everyone else.”

— Elle McNicoll

34. “Stories are like footprints that can never be washed away. Even if the print fades or the the pages rot or the author is long gone... the story moves into someone else’s head. It finds a new place to live.”

— Elle McNicoll

35. “Exactly. These stories about fairies and giants and vampires and trolls... they may have written them completely wrong. But you’re still more likely to find a magical monster in a story than someone like me.”

— Elle McNicoll

36. “She struggled with other children; she fought with teachers; she had difficulty controlling her emotions. She would only take part in school if she was engaged or interested.”

— Elle McNicoll