Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Holly Smale

Quote by Holly Smale

“I do know what came over me. It's exactly what always comes over me when someone breaks rules, no matter how totally arbitrary they seem to be. Something in my brain snaps, and I detonate like a hand grenade. Which is incredibly hypocritical, given how happy I am to ignore rules if I don't personally agree with them.”

Quote by Holly Smale

Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

Work

Cassandra in Reverse

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Holly Smale
Holly Smale

Holly Smale is a British writer known for her young adult novels. Her works are celebrated for their humor and wit, appealing to a wide audience of young readers. more

You May Also Like

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“Yet the autistic woman is not masking with the intention of being deceitful. Her true self is invisible even to her own person. She is masking to fit in, and doing so unconsciously. Often, she doesn't even understand that she has been camouflaging herself until she gets her diagnosis. Before that, she thinks her struggle is everyone else's, too. At least, that's what it was like for me.”

NonfictionAutismAutisticNeurodiversityMasking
Book:Autisterna: om kvinnor på spektrat
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image