Daniel Tammet
Daniel Tammet
Daniel Tammet FRSAis an English writer, essayist, translator, and autistic savant. His 2006 memoir, Born on a Blue Day, about his life with Asperger syndrome and savant syndrome, was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" in 2008 by the American Library Association Young Adult Library Services magazine. His second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, was one of France's best-selling books of 2009. Thinking in Numbers, his third book, was published on 16 August 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton in...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth31 January 1979
books epitaph life point respect
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.
life naturally prevent pushing
When things don't come so naturally to you, you want to persevere, you want to keep pushing yourself to overcome obstacles that prevent you from having the kind of life that you want to have.
happy-life media autism
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.
able way life-is
Life is going to be complex, and the only way we're able navigate our way through it at all is by living as best we can and absorbing those experiences and somehow making intuitive responses in future situations that resemble them in some way.
apartment difficult drop home life looks quiet respects simple time travel
There are always things I find difficult - being in crowds, remembering faces. I do like routines. I always travel with someone. My life in Avignon is a very quiet one. I have an apartment that looks over the whole city. I can drop into town, but a lot of the time I write from home. In some respects I still live a very quiet, simple life.
adult changed enormous found given incredibly large life living loyal lucky paris withdrawn
I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life - from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.
achievement
I'm very comfortable with the idea of there being late bloomers, and for me, of course, there's no difficulty at all in the way that I think of talent and achievement and so on.
child ears fingers lovely motion quiet
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.
colour gradual nine numbers primary printed realising run school sizes sums
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.
anyone certainly copies gogh mozart therefore van
Someone who copies a Van Gogh does not therefore become Van Gogh, and the same would go for Mozart or anyone else who contributed something that was original. Certainly in the way that I described visualizing numbers in abstract, meaningful shapes.
complex deal falling fiction love people relationships taught
Reading and discovering fiction has taught me how to empathise, understand falling in love and all those complex relationships that people have to deal with.
against aware inherently views wholly
Our thoughts and our feelings, of course, are not wholly objective, they're inherently subjective. And that's the danger, and I think as long as we're aware of it and can push back against it, I don't think that these two views are necessarily incompatible.
doctors experience four mild numbers study three
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.
control office retaining targets time work
Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work.