I’ve got a quiet voice. I think it’s because as a child I didn’t speak very much. I used to put my fingers in my ears to feel the silence, which was like a lovely trickling motion in my head. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
I certainly have routines in my day-to-day life that are important to me and still give me feelings of security and control, but the capacity to break out of them every so often as I travel has given me a second wind. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
Working with the doctors is a fascinating two-way process. I am interested in what they suggest about why I’m the way I am. But if they could make me ‘normal’, I wouldn’t want that. I’ve been like this for so long, it’s what makes me . Daniel Tammet Read Quote
I found maths very easy, but I still enjoyed discovering things. You have to have the necessary information. For example, what’s the difference between the mean and the median? Probability fascinated me. You have to think very carefully about things, which is the way my mind works anyway. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
It was a gradual process, realising I was different. I remember at primary school getting a worksheet with sums printed on it. I thought that they must have run out of the right colour inks and sizes for the numbers, because they were all the same, which isn’t how I experienced numbers at all. To me, nine is big and blue. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
My first memory – at about four – was of numbers. The doctors who study me think a combination of mild autism and seizures I had when I was three have made me experience numbers the way I do. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
We will always have more to discover, more to invent, more to understand and that’s much closer to art and literature than any science. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
One of the lines from my books is about having respect for different minds, and if I had to have an epitaph at this point in my life, that would be it. Daniel Tammet Read Quote
I love music. I have a fondness for Chopin, and I very much like his ‘Raindrop Prelude.’ Daniel Tammet Read Quote