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Holly Smale

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Famous Holly Smale Quotes

“What's strange is that small changes upset me immensely and always have done. A tree trimmed outside my house, the reorganization of a supermarket aisle, a new haircut, an updated app format. I cried for hours when they "new and improved" the recipe for the mashed potato I eat every Monday night. But the big stuff? The deaths, the tragedies, the life-changing shifts that rock everyone else to their core? That's when I'm cool, calm and collected. It's why I had to give three speeches at my own parents' funeral, and also--I'm assuming--why I heard my great-uncle Joseph call me an "empty robot" under his breath when I sat back down again. I don't understand it, but there's just something in me that knows how to stand still when the earth shatters.”

AutismChangesAutistic
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“Maybe I'm not overthinking it. Maybe I've been told I'm overthinking it so often, by so many people, I've convinced myself it's all I'm capable of. But what if they're wrong? What if I'm thinking it exactly the right amount? What if everyone else is simply underthinking it, continuously, and the deficit is actually theirs? Because something tells me I'm not in the wrong here: my instincts are spot-on.”

AutismAutisticOverthinking
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“But I find being around people so hard. Any people. There's all this noise and light and color and sensation, all the time, and I don't know how to read tone or emotions or jokes or sarcasm or flirting. It's like all the things that everyone else can do automatically, I have to do manually. And I get overwhelmed. Constantly. That's the face you're seeing. It's me, trying to process everything at once.”

AutismAutisticNeurodivergentOverstimulation
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“I mean, we should probably have worked it out for ourselves, what with the lifelong obsession with Greek mythology and the rules and regulations and the need for quiet, dark rooms and the same restaurant and food over and over again and the sensory issues and the repetitive movements and the massive meltdowns, but we all just thought she was your bog-standard academic.”

AutismAutisticSensory ProcessingRoutines
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“I return myself to the safety of my bedroom and throw myself into a loop of my own making: read a book I've already read, watch a TV show I've seen dozens of times, wear my Wednesday pajamas and eat my Wednesday dinner. I listen to a favorite song on repeat, dozens of times; bury myself in familiarity like a small, hurt animal in its den, turning in tiny circles until it can comfortably settle. I make the same small sounds to myself, over and over again. I curl up in a ball on my bed, rocking gently, losing myself in the comfort of a pattern. I soothe myself with repetition until I feel calm.”

RoutineAutismRepetitionAutisticSameness
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“I think about this offer carefully for a few seconds. Strangers, packed together in a loud, flashing room in scratchy clothes, making pointless small talk, eating food I don't like from plates that might not be properly clean, using cutlery with little bits of dried food still stuck to it. Intermittently dancing. Yeah: if Hades ever dragged me to the Underworld, that's exactly what I'd find there.”

AutismIntrovertAutisticPartiesOverstimulated
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“I realize that's how it sometimes feels to be me. As if I have to hide who I am, all of the time. As if I have to pretend to be like everyone else, just so people will love me. As if I'm constantly being asked to share, to reveal myself, to open up, and when I do--when I finally show people who I truly am--it's not what anyone wanted and they explode right in front of me. I am so fucking done with making myself smaller.”

AutismAutisticMaskingUnmaskingAutistic Masking
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“I'm on the spectrum," I say with a jolt. "Derek and Jack were right." "They were not." Artemis scowls. "That's a euphemism. They don't want to say autistic because they think it's rude. It is not rude." "It's not?" I say distantly, observing my brain shift again. "Nope. People think autism is some kind of error, and it's not. You're not broken or 'disordered,' or whatever they say on their little bits of paper. That just means 'not exactly like me.' Which--" Artemis points at the folder "--I think you'll see is one of the many things Mum wrote in the margins, along with the words go to hell, highlighted in pink. Autism is just a different wiring. You're built in alternative neurological software, from the ground up. Every single part of you. And it's..." "Colorful and loud?" I guess, and Artemis laughs. "I was going to say brilliant," she says. "But, yeah, I'd imagine that too. Although I don't know why anyone is surprised at how the world treats you. This has never really been a planet that embraces difference.”

AutismAutisticNeurodivergentAutism Acceptance
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“I should be more surprised. I should be reeling. But isn't this exactly how I've always felt? That I'm not quite made the same? That I'm some kind of alien, trying to learn how to be a human from scratch every day? That I constantly need to translate the world around me to myself, and then myself back to the world again, like speaking two completely different languages simultaneously? Wow. No wonder I'm always so bloody exhausted.”

AutismAutistic
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“This book does not represent autism, and neither I nor Cassie represent autistic people. We are simply individual voices in a choir of millions of amazing neurodivergent people, all with our own experiences, or own ways of seeing the world, our own ways of existing. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, and I would not want to try. So, whether you enjoyed this book or not, whether you see yourself represented in this story or not, I urge you to seek out other autistic voices. We are beautiful, we are unique, and we are legion.”

AutismRepresentationAutisticNeurodivergentOwn VoicesOwnvoicesAcknowledgments
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“Will's brown eyes are suddenly trained on me. Stiffening, I stay as still as I can and attempt to look like a person who cannot feel themselves being studied like a bug in a jar. I'm being a normal human, right? This is how people sit, isn't it? Am I jittering, rocking, bouncing, clawing? Has Will noticed that I'm just copying his body language and facial expressions, or is he thinking how pretty I look in the sun? Does he like me, or is he faintly creeped out by me? Is he interested, or bored? Is he considering kissing me, or wondering why I look like I've only been given this body recently and still have no idea how to drive it? ("Cassandra seems to believe she might be an alien.") It's all a complete mystery. All I know is the longer he studies me, the more confused I become. Also, the sheer effort of not accidentally playing piano fingers on my ice cream is exhausting: it feels like I'm fighting the Colchian dragon and hoping nobody will notice.”

AutismSelf ConsciousnessSocial AnxietyStimmingAutisitc
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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“For possibly the first time in three decades, I’m not weighed down by trying to read someone’s colors and their facial expression and their body language and their tone and their words and also look out for jokes and sarcasm and flirting and secret insults and what is implied and what is left unspoken and somehow simultaneously filter out the chatter around me and the milk frother and the sensation of the chair under my bum and the movement of my fingers and position of my own feet and the breeze on my face and the sound of the doorbell ringing and the sound of my own heart and breath and the muscles in my own face. For just a few seconds of my life I get to just be present, and it is joyful.”

AutismOverstimulationSensory Processing
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
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