Daniel Tammet Quotes

Author Image

Daniel Tammet

Profession : Writer

Birth : January 31, 1979

From 'Embracing the Wide Sky', I went to the States, to Canada and to different parts of Europe as well. I gave interviews in several languages.

Daniel Tammet

I can well imagine that certain writers, even writers that we'd consider today very great writers, may not necessarily have tested highly on IQ just because of their numerical skills, or maybe they may not be very good at memory, and are not particularly good at these kinds of tests.

Daniel Tammet

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.

Daniel Tammet

It was hard for me to find my voice because I was, for so long, absorbed in my own world.

Daniel Tammet

Squaring numbers is a symmetrical process that I like very much. And when I divide one number by another, say, 13 divided by 97, I see a spiral rotating downwards in larger and larger loops that seem to warp and curve. The shapes coalesce into the right number. I never write anything down.

Daniel Tammet

My autism is a very mild form. It was diagnosed at the age of 25, partly because it wasn't diagnosable as a teenager (this is Asperger's syndrome, specifically). But there were certainly traits within that condition, within the autism spectrum in general, especially at the high functioning end, that I think are best looked at as pluses.

Daniel Tammet

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.

Daniel Tammet

Growing up, I would have to watch the other children and learn from my mistakes. I would have to push myself to overcome the things most people don't have to think about. Brushing my teeth was very difficult because of the noise of the brush.

Daniel Tammet

I certainly have routines in my day-to-day life that are important to me and still give me feelings of security and control, but the capacity to break out of them every so often as I travel has given me a second wind.

Daniel Tammet

How any person decides to emphasize strengths and mitigate weaknesses is something people have to figure out for themselves. I'm wary of the self-help literature that suggests there are certain rules. I'm very happy for people to look at my story and say it's possible to achieve many things.

Daniel Tammet

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.

Daniel Tammet

We will always have more to discover, more to invent, more to understand and that's much closer to art and literature than any science.

Daniel Tammet

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.

Daniel Tammet

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.

Daniel Tammet

I found maths very easy, but I still enjoyed discovering things. You have to have the necessary information. For example, what's the difference between the mean and the median? Probability fascinated me. You have to think very carefully about things, which is the way my mind works anyway.

Daniel Tammet

Working with the doctors is a fascinating two-way process. I am interested in what they suggest about why I'm the way I am. But if they could make me 'normal', I wouldn't want that. I've been like this for so long, it's what makes me .

Daniel Tammet