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“we experience pictures or scenes in our minds that pop up out of nowhere.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Criticizing people, winding them up, making idiots of them or fooling them doesn’t make people with autism laugh.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“To me, making eye contact with someone I’m talking to feels a bit creepy, so I tend to avoid it.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“The reason we need so much time isn’t necessarily because we haven’t understood, but because by the time it’s our turn to speak, the reply we wanted to make has often upped and vanished from our heads.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“My memory, however, is more like a pool of dots. I’m always “picking up�� these dots—by asking my questions—so I can arrive back at the memory that the dots represent”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Your vestibular and proprioceptive senses are also out of kilter, so the floor keeps tilting like a ferry in heavy seas, and you’re no longer sure where your hands and feet are in relation to the rest of you.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Shun was getting used to life in Heaven now, and he had made a lot of friends, as Kazuo had said. Everyone was kind, and there were no barriers of language, ethnicity, or era. People lived so peacefully here that it was difficult to believe how much they had fought and quarreled when they were alive.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“The person who's suffering the most is the one who's causing all the headaches for everyone else - that is, the one with autism.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“But when I'm jumping it's as if all of my feelings are going upward to the sky.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“The harshest ordeal for us is that we are causing grief for other people.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“I also hope that by reading this book you might become a better friend to a person with autism.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Your first contacts with most support agencies will put the last nails in the coffin of faintheartedness, and graft onto you a layer of scar tissue and cynicism as thick as rhino hide. There are gifted and resourceful people working in autism support, but with depressing regularity government policy appears to be about Band-Aids and fig leaves, and not about realizing the potential of children with special needs and helping them become long-term net contributors to society”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“What’s bothered me for a long time is this idea people have that so long as we’re keeping eye contact while they’re talking to us, that alone means we’re taking in every word. Ha! If only that was all it took, my disability would have been cured a long, long time ago��”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“For us, you see, having autism is normal—so we can’t know for sure what your “normal�� is even like. But so long as we can learn to love ourselves, I’m not sure how much it matters whether we’re normal or autistic.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Special Needs publishing is a jungle.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“I know—we can’t even use gestures—but we really badly want you to understand what’s going on inside our hearts and minds. And basically, my feelings are pretty much the same as yours.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Just the act of reading costs us a lot of effort—sorting out the words and somehow voicing them is already a very tall order. More practice will help, however. Please never laugh at us, even when we’re doing a less than great job.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“To be able to study like other people, we need more time and different strategies and approaches. And those people who help us study, they actually need more patience than we do. They need to understand our eagerness to learn, even though from the outside we may not appear to be keen students. But we are. We, too, want to grow.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Aquatic life-forms came into being and evolved, but why did they then have to emerge onto dry land, and turn into human beings who chose to lead lives ruled by time?”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Isn't there a belief out there that if a person is using verbal language, it follows that he person is saying what they want to say?”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Ако не можете да рзберете какво виждате, все едно нищо не виждате.”
― Наоки Хигашида, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Гласът ни е като дъха ни - той просто излиза от устата ни, без да го осъзнаваме.”
― Наоки Хигашида, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“But so long as we can learn to love ourselves, I’m not sure how much it matters whether we’re normal or autistic.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“To give the short version, I’ve learned that every human being, with or without disabilities, needs to strive to do their best, and by striving for happiness you will arrive at happiness.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Q23What’s the worst thing about having autism? You never notice. Really, you have no idea quite how miserable we are. The people who are looking after us may say, “Minding these kids is really hard work, you know!�� but for us—who are always causing the problems and are useless at pretty much everything we try to do—you can’t begin to imagine how miserable and sad we get. Whenever we’ve done something wrong, we get told off or laughed at, without even being able to apologize, and we end up hating ourselves and despairing about our own lives, again and again and again. It’s impossible not to wonder why we were born into this world as human beings at all.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“If I’m not going to be myself anymore, what’s the point of being reborn?”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Another category is the more confessional memoir, usually written by a parent, describing the impact of autism on the family and sometimes the positive effect of an unorthodox treatment. These memoirs are media-friendly and raise the profile of autism in the marketplace of worthy causes, but I have found their practical use to be limited, and in fairness they usually aren’t written to be useful.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“You can’t judge a person by their looks. But once you know the other person’s inner self, both of you can be that much closer.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“When you know that your kid wants to speak with you, when you know that he’s taking in his surroundings every bit as attentively as your nonautistic daughter, whatever the evidence to the contrary, then you can be ten times more patient, willing, understanding and communicative; and ten times better able to help his development”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism