Masking Quotes

“She's functioning - don't make that face, it's a perfectly appropriate medical term - she's functioning and I thought people might like to see that. She has it mild, Keedie. Like you."
"It's mild to you!" Keedie shouts and I flinch, not used to hearing her raise her voice. "It's mild to you and every other heartless soul in this village, Nina, it's not mild to me. It's not mild to Addie! It's mild to you because we make it so, at great personal cost!”
― Elle McNicoll, A Kind of Spark

“Once you drop a mask, you can never wear it again.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“I wish people could understand that masking is so much more than biting your tongue and forcing yourself to be as average as possible. It's about supressing basic physiological needs. It's about hiding the parts of yourself that come naturally, so they don't seem unnatural to others. It's physical. It's insidious.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“Sometimes masking can feel like you're dragging a chain across the ground. Being with people who are like me feels like someone unlocking the restraints.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“I love music. It sets everything in me alive. Every hair stands out on end. I feel like there's a box in my heart, a secret, hidden part of myself. I keep so many things locked inside that box so that no one else will ever see. And when I listen to music, alone in my room with my giant headphones on, the box flies open and all of the colours spill out and somehow merge with the music. I love the feeling. All of my masking and my reservations leave and the hidden parts of my soul come out.”
― Elle McNicoll, Show Us Who You Are

“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.”
― Clara Tornvall, Autisterna: om kvinnor på spektrat

“People don’t say what they mean. They say what makes them likable, and expect you to guess the rest.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“Why are autistic people called abnormal… when we’re the only ones who speak the truth?”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“I became the girl who made people uncomfortable just by asking them to be honest.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“I look like you. Sound like you. Move like you.
Speak your language. But I’m not like you. I never was.”
― Michal Edelsburg, Octopus Mimicus: A Literary Memoir of Love, Autism, and a Different Mind

“[I]n the day he is strong. But at night, he cries himself to sleep.”
― Antonia Hodgson, The Raven Scholar

“[...] and my face is sore from smiling so hard in an effort to appear friendly and nonthreatening.”
― Samantha Irby, Quietly Hostile: Essays

“Just because brokerages disclose a convoluted
web of profiteering doesn’t mean it’s appropriate. It just means they are hiding these questionable practices in plain sight with a mountain of compliance language that no one will ever read.”
― Christopher Manske, Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS

“A man stares at himself in the mirror and peels away all the layers. But the person he sees doesn't feels like someone he knows. He feels like he is looking at a total stranger.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“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.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“The way she worked a room fascinated me. In adapting to autism, she had learned to interact with others by plan, but all the while making it look as if it were the most spontaneous and natural thing in the world.”
― Tom Equels, Horseman's Tale: A Novel

“What was the point when life was a constant circle of forcing a broken mask onto yourself to survive, only to rip it off at the end of the day to reveal a girl who was just as broken? I had no energy left to be the me I once was--and should still have been. Simply living was a chore.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“I take things literally. Not because I’m stupid. Because I listen.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“To be fluent in a language you never wanted to learn is its own kind of grief.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where The Cicada Sleeps: A Diary-Style Portrait of Girlhood, Betrayal, and the Quiet Violence of Being Misunderstood

“I had to learn to pretend to be normal. My father kept trying to convince me that I was normal. He was wrong about that, but I'm glad he taught me the way he did.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“But worst of all, I must pretend to want things I don't really want [...] Sometimes I almost convince myself I do want them [...] If I could want them, life would be easier.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“I’ve known what it’s like to sit somewhere loud so you don’t have to hear yourself think.”
― B.L. Spencer, Silentwhisper

“For all those who seem destined to stand on the outside looking in. Inside these pages, you're free to take your mask off.”
― Taylor Grothe, Hollow

“I completely understand what you mean about feeling locked into yourself. For me, I don't even think it has anything to do with other people thinking they know me. It's more that I want to leap in and say certain things and do certain things, but I always seem to hold myself back. I think a big part of me is afraid. Even thinking about it makes me nauseated.”
― Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“Give them the 'Half-Smile' routine. It doesn't reach the eyes; nobody looks at the eyes on this scene. It just says you're detached. Amused. Cooler than the room. A ghost playing dress-up inside of a tomb.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“So you give them the script. It’s part of the scheme: You say, 'Living the dream, baby. Just living the dream.' And you wink. The wink is the punctuation mark of the lie. It sells the performance. It stops them from asking why.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Why is every girl on social media pretending to 'baddie' now?
Who wants a ‘baddie’. I don’t want a ‘baddie’.
I want a muse. I want a beautiful natural disaster. I want a woman who reads, writes, who thinks, who can ruin my life with her wit and charm.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“We walk around with this arrogant assumption that the clock works for us.
That we have time to forgive, time to love, time to get our sh*t together.
We FUKCING don’t.
We’re all just renting a seat at the bar, waiting for the bartender to tell us we’ve had enough and kick us out into the dark.
So better drink up.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Sometimes I get paralyzed worrying about what people think of me. Am I behind?

Am I embarrassing myself?

But then I come to a place like this and I remember... nobody cares.
I mean that in the most beautiful way possible. Every single light in that window is a person worrying about their own heartbreak, their own rent, their own dreams.
You are just a background character in their movie. And honestly? That makes me feel so free.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“There must be something hauntingly beautiful about people who leave first

But I wouldn't know, I'm usually the poor bastard left standing in the driveway watching the taillights fade.

But you have to admire the poetry of it

The preemptive strike. Slipping out the door while the bed is still warm and the illusion is still intact.

They never have to stick around for the messy part. They never see the rot set in.

God... what a beautiful, cowardly way to break a heart.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”