Nikolaas Tinbergen

Relatively many autists are first-born children. There is also a pretty widespread conviction that the parents of autists are somehow different - for instance, many of them are very serious people or people who are themselves under some sort of strain.

Whenever a gentle pressure is used to make a slight change in leg posture, the neck muscles react immediately. Conversely, when the therapist helps one to 'release' the neck muscles, it is amazing to see quite pronounced movements for instance of the toes, even when one is lying on a couch.

For a time, I believed not in God nor Santa Claus, but in mermaids. They seemed as logical and possible to me as the brittle twig of a seahorse in the zoo aquarium or the skates lugged up on the lines of cursing Sunday fishermen - skates the shape of old pillowslips with the full, coy lips of women.