"Apathy is a pandemic. Empathy is the vaccine." - to teen filmmaker Ella Fields on a Zoom call
"The good news is that it could make her a star. The bad news is that it could make her a star." - in reference to an actress I was writing a role for
"I wonder sometimes if we'll ever understand that we're all connected. We are one."- from my Medium story "Holly's Notebook"
"I have a past and no way to erase it. I have a future, and I need to chase it." - lyrics of my song "Forward," from my screenplay "78 Percent"
"If there's no police, they say, they're going to have to devote a lot of time and energy to creating an entirely new job to stop people from doing wrong. That's not necessary. The job that's going to stop people from doing wrong already exists, because this job is our teachers. We need to increase funding for them, so that they can devote entire class periods to teaching our children how to resist the ideas that the fact that a person's skin is a different shade is something to be celebrated, not feared. To teach them that violence is never the solution, and that there's a nonviolent solution to every problem and emotion we face." - responding to talk of abolishing the police
"Media is incapable of telling a better story than the story of how it was made." - from my Medium story "A Love for Humanity"
"We need to stop thinking in terms of 'I' and 'me' and get into 'we, us, togetherness.'" - to teen filmmaker Ella Fields on a Zoom call
"One event together is enough for me to see myself in you." - citing the common experience of watching the Super Bowl as an example of how basic empathy can be
"It was corrupting me in much the same way I knew social media would: it addicted me to dopamine rushes on a level that not only made me believe that undisturbed bliss was a possibility, but prompted me to act in pursuit of undisturbed bliss, and it turned a digitally displayed numeric value into my 'You Matter Quotient.'" - describing why I stopped using the MailTrack email extension
"Hand her the food bag." "Hold on, Mom, I'm texting to let her know we're here." - while DoorDashing with my mother and alerting a customer that I didn't realize was standing right outside the car
"I want to change the world, Ella." "I think you can, Leo." "I think we can." - myself and teen filmmaker Ella Fields on a Zoom call
"It shows the best of social media, its ability to amplify voices to the level that aspirations can be more promisingly achieved, and the worst of social media, it can so heavily addict someone to being 'liked' that they will kill themselves if they are not." - in an email, referencing the musical "Dear Evan Hansen"
"People with autism are like TV commercials. Both are perceived as annoying and obnoxious, but really, we're just trying to communicate and connect with the world." - in an email to Sally Campbell, who produced commercials about sexism for Audi and Gillette
"You're a beautiful person, you belong, you matter." - Me to anyone who passes by me while I'm on a walk
"Activism shouldn't have rules, because activism is about breaking the rules." - Me to Shayna Jordan Rutman, executive director of the Meddling Kids Movement
"Who am I if I'm not by your side?" - Ryan, the 11-year-old autistic main character of my unpublished 2014 children's novel "A Place in the Puzzle," to Heather, his only friend
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