Top 40 John Elder Robison Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Saying you “have” something implies that it’s temporary and undesirable. Asperger’s isn’t like that. You’ve been Aspergian as long as you can remember, and you’ll be that way all your life. It’s a way of being, not a disease.”

— John Elder Robison

2. “Competence excuses strange behavior.”

— John Elder Robison

3. “Building up a weakness just makes you less disabled. Building a strength can take you to the top of the world.”

— John Elder Robison

4. “I don’t want to be a genius or a freak or something on display. I wish for empathy and compassion from those around me, and I appreciate sincerity, clarity, and logicality in other people. I believe most people – autistic or not – share this wish. And now, with my newfound insight, I’m on the way to achieving that goal. I hope you’ll keep those thoughts in mind the next time you meet someone who looks or acts a little strange.”

— John Elder Robison

5. “And now I know it is perfectly natural for me not to look at someone when I talk. Those of us with Asperger’s are just not comfortable doing it. In fact, I don’treally understand why it’s considered normal to stare at someone’s eyeballs.”

— John Elder Robison

6. “I don’t really understsand why it’s considered normal to stare at someone’s eyeballs.”

— John Elder Robison

7. “I needed to stop forcing myself to fit into something I could never be a part of.”

— John Elder Robison

8. “And my experience in the music scene had shown me that there were places for places in the world where misfits were welcome.”

— John Elder Robison

9. “It does not matter what sixty-six percent of people do in any particular situation. All that matters is what you do.”

— John Elder Robison

10. “Simply making myself aware of others has remarkably improved my social life. People accept me much faster now that I ignore them less.”

— John Elder Robison

11. “As I’ve gotten older, I have taught myself to act “normal.” I can do it well enough to fool the average person for a whole evening, maybe longer. But it all falls apart if I hear something that elicits a strong emotional reaction from me that is different from what people expect. In an instant, in their eyes, I turn into the sociopathic killer I was believed to be forty years ago.”

— John Elder Robison

12. “There are plenty of people in the world whose lives are governed by rote and routine. Such people will never be happy dealing with me, because I don’t conform.”

— John Elder Robison

13. “First, he taught me how to walk. Then, armed with sticks and dead snakes, he chased me and I learned how to run.”

— John Elder Robison

14. “Here’s a good rule of thumb: Your own rituals are okay as long as they don’t interfere with your responsibilities in daily life, or make you the subject of teasing or ridicule. Rituals become a problem whenever they prevent you from doing the stuff you’re supposed to do, or when they get you in trouble.”

— John Elder Robison

15. “I felt like a fraud because I could not do anything in the normal way. I couldn’t complete school. I couldn’t “advance through the ranks.” I couldn’t “do it by the book.” And I always ignored the rules.”

— John Elder Robison

16. “I have decided to name you Slave,” I said, looking at my mother. “And your name is Stupid,” I told my father.”

— John Elder Robison

17. “Unlike some older brothers, I never set him on fire, or cut off an arm or leg, or drowned him in the tub.”

— John Elder Robison

18. “It was the first place where I was thrown together with children I didn’t know. It didn’t go well.”

— John Elder Robison

19. “Even at five, I was beginning to understand the world of things better than the world of people.”

— John Elder Robison

20. “But were we so different, my pug and I?”

— John Elder Robison

21. “I am sure antidepressants, drugs, and liquor have their place. But so far, that place is in others, not me.”

— John Elder Robison

22. “His words made me wonder what else might be prewired in my brain. Did we have multiple personalities all wired up and ready to use, just as “emotional vision” was always latent in my mind, waiting for activation?”

— John Elder Robison

23. “When we discover and build upon our gifts it spurs positive feelings in us and those around us, and those feelings go a long way toward dissipating the burden of failure that many young Aspergians carry as kids.”

— John Elder Robison

24. “Law-abiding citizens and people with good political connections stand their ground.”

— John Elder Robison

25. “As a logical thinker, I cannot help thinking, based on the evidence, that many people who exhibit dramatic reactions to bad news involving strangers are hypocrites.”

— John Elder Robison

26. “Most of the time, I played by myself, with my toys. I liked the more complex toys, especially blocks and Lincoln Logs. I still remember the taste of Lincoln Logs.”

— John Elder Robison

27. “It was that time of the night when most of the drunks were already home in bed. The crickets were done chirping, and the birds weren’t ready to herald sunrise.”

— John Elder Robison

28. “Had I not been drawn out by interested grown-ups, I might well have drifted farther into the world of autism. I might have ceased to communicate.”

— John Elder Robison

29. “It has always bothered me that many people, doctors included, tend to view anything that deviates from the typical as being abnormal or broken.”

— John Elder Robison

30. “I had created a fantasy that seeing into people would be sweetness and love. Maybe there was some of that, but there was a lot more fear, and jealousy, and anger, and every bad thing I could imagine.”

— John Elder Robison

31. “I would make my own war movie for trick-or-treaters, one in which they would be the stars.”

— John Elder Robison

32. “The hard part was living the contrast between being rich and being broke. It was like being smart, and waking up one day to find yourself dumb as a rock, but able to remember your former brains.”

— John Elder Robison

33. “That was the definition of management – getting others to do your work for you. And we were the others.”

— John Elder Robison

34. “When characters got up and moved on their own I found it so unnerving that I would stop writing for days. Glue eventually held them down.”

— John Elder Robison

35. “When I act politely, I build a reserve of goodwill in others. That reserve allows those people to cut me some slack when I do something annoying.”

— John Elder Robison

36. “I was so used to living inside my own world that I answered with whatever I had been thinking. If.”

— John Elder Robison

37. “The world is full of friendly people with no technical skills.”

— John Elder Robison

38. “As a logical thinker, I cannot help thinking, based on the evidence, that many people who exhibit dramatic reactions to bad news involving strangers are hypocrites. That troubles me. People like that hear bad news from across the world, and they burst into wails and tears as though their own children have just been run over by a bus. To me, they don’t seem very different from actors and actresses – they are able to burst into tears on command, but does it really mean anything?”

— John Elder Robison

39. “I named him Poodle, beginning a long tradition of functional pet naming.”

— John Elder Robison

40. “By the time I was twelve, I had progressed from “If he doesn’t get better, he may have to be institutionalized” to “He’s a weird, screwed-up kid.”

— John Elder Robison