Daniel Tammet · 226 pages
Rating: (16.8K votes)
“You don't have to be disabled to be different, because everybody's different.”
“Why learn a number like pi to so many decimal places? The answer I gave then as I do now is that pi is for me an extremely beautiful and utterly unique thing. Like the Mona Lisa or a Mozart symphony, pi is its own reason for loving it.”
“No relationship is without its difficulties and this is certainly true when one or both of the persons involved has an autistic spectrum disorder. Even so, I believe what is truly essential to the success of any relationship is not so much compatibility, but love. When you love someone, virtually anything is possible.”
“I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate, gradual process that mustn’t be rushed or seized upon but allowed and encouraged to take its course over time. I pictured it as a butterfly, simultaneously beautiful and fragile, that once afloat belonged to the air and any attempt to grab at it would only destroy it.”
“Like many parents, they equated normality with being happy and productive.”
“Professor Ramachandran believes this synesthetic connection between our hearing and seeing senses was an important first step towards the creation of words in early humans. According to this theory, our ancestors would have begun to talk by using sounds that evoked the object they wanted to describe. For example, words referring to something small often involve making a synesthetic small i sound with the lips and a narrowing of the vocal tracts: Little, teeny, petite, whereas the opposite is true of words denoting something large or enormous. If the theory is right, then language emerged from the vast array of synesthetic connections in the human brain.”
“There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.”
“Where is the dog tag you found?”
“What?” Shelton yipped. “We…lost it.”
“Where?”
“In the woods. After we ran.”
“Where in the woods? Ran from what?”
“Oh, uh…Tory dropped the tag when we ran from…whatever.”
“From whatever?” Hi hammered. “Did you see men with guns or not?”
“Um, no. I guess not.”
“You guess?”
“It was dark.” Shelton struggled. “I realize now that nobody was there.”
“Then what did you hear?”
“Uh, er…pops. Like sticks breaking?”
Shelton’s responses were growing increasingly feeble.
“How many? From which direction?”
“Lots. Like, from everywhere.”
Hi’s eyebrows shot up. “You heard ‘lots’ of ‘pops like sticks’ coming from everywhere? That’s your story?”
“Wait, no, not everywhere. From the…left?”
“She had always liked what Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone with the Wind: I'll think about it tomorrow. Not anymore.”
“He is really cute,” I admitted, curious as to how many girls like me this guy had met.
He shook his head in amusement as he worked on his painting. “Of course. I guess he’d have to be for you to risk so much, huh? Alchemists never fall for the Moroi who aren’t cute and brooding.”
“I never said he was brooding.”
“He’s a ‘really cute’ vampire who paints. Are you saying he doesn’t brood?”
I felt my cheeks flush a little. “He broods a little. Okay … a lot.”
“She was a dangerous, dangerous girl. A plague. A Mountain of Adamant who tore the iron from ships, sinking them to their watery graves without a second thought. With a mere smile and a wrinkle of her nose.”
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