Guy Davenport Quotes

I was diagnosed as mentally retarded as late as the fourth grade.

I don't really have Down's syndrome; I just have a slight case of it.

I'm not good at normal things. I can't drive a car. I couldn't read till I was 10.

Mom worked with autistic children.

We've been blessed with four beautiful children. Michael, he doesn't have much of a problem anymore. He is high functional, probably because of early intervention.

I worked for a while as a teaching assistant while I was struggling. I really enjoyed it, working with kids with special needs, autism. It takes a hell of a lot of concentration, and you've got to focus on the child properly for seven hours a day.

I am a father. My son's name is Max and my daughter's name is Billie Grace. Twelve years ago Max was born with Down Syndrome. His journey has been complicated by infantile seizures, sleep apnea, dietary challenges and now, puberty!

Being dyslexic, I was told that I was an idiot all the time.

For those that don't know, my sister was born with Down Syndrome, and she was institutionalized in the very early sixties. Me, being just a small boy and being shuffled around between my mother and grandparents, I never knew her.

As a child, I was called stupid and lazy. On the SAT I got 159 out of 800 in math. My parents had no idea that I had a learning disability.

But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple.

What is the politically correct term for 'retarded'?""I think the words you're fishing for are 'mentally disabled.' And no. I'm not mentally disabled.

We're so special, when you look in the dictionary under short bus, there's a group picture of us,'' Stevie Rae said, sounding weak but definately alive.

They think we are retarded. They are retarded.

When I was a kid they didn't call it dyslexia. They called it you know, you were slow, or you were retarded, or whatever. What you can never change is the effect that the words 'dumb' and 'stupid' have on young people. I knew I wasn't stupid, and I knew I wasn't dumb. My mother told me that. If you read to me, I could tell you everything that you read. They didn't know what it was. They knew I wasn't lazy, but what was it?

I don't find it humiliating when they call me a psychopath or witch.

My mother struggled immensely with mental illness, and so did I. She grew up bipolar, but it was never diagnosed nor recognized. It was shrugged off like a 'symptom' of being female - of her being weak. I also experienced this growing up: I felt that the great pain I experienced was a dramatisation.

I grew up in front of the camera from an early age. It distorts your perception of who you are. Having a lot of attention at a young age is not healthy.

A lot of families with kids with autism can't afford speech therapy for their children and can't afford to get them in the best schools for autism. We're trying to help make a difference in those communities.

I know I look crazy, but I am not!

My IQ is 154. It was measured because my father was desperately hoping that they could determine if I had anything wrong psychologically so that I could be locked up the way one of his sisters had.

Some people think I'm crazy, but I'm just a normal dude that loves music.

I know it's fashionable to blame your childhood for everything nowadays - thank you, Freud. The thing is, though, I really don't feel scarred by mine. But perhaps if I'd been in therapy for 10 years, and you were able to read the records, you'd disagree.

I was in so much emotional pain as a young girl that whatever distracted me from how I felt about myself was fine by me.

The idea of a physical stigma is quite appealing. When I wrote the book of 'Bodies,' there was a lot of that in the book about how there are physical manifestations of psychological problems - I think it's described as 'Narrativizing The Body.'