95 Quotes by Stella Young

I once choked on a chip at a friend's birthday when I was seven and had to be sent home, as I'd broken my collarbone coughing.

I really love filling out forms - quite fortuitous, really, given that as one of Australia's 4 million-ish disabled people, ticking boxes and recording my life for other people is what I've spent a fair chunk of my time doing.

In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less.

I quickly learned that asking if an interview space was wheelchair accessible was a bad idea; it gave a potential employer an immediate bad impression. It was either a black mark against my name, or a straight up discussion of why I wouldn't be able to work there because they had no wheelchair access.

By far, the most disabling thing in my life is the physical environment. It dictates what I can and can't do every day.

If everyone's looking at me, I might as well say something interesting.

I do sometimes painful things to my body in an effort to conform to culturally imposed beauty ideals.

I do not identify as a person with a disability. I'm a disabled person. And I'll be a monkey's disabled uncle if I'm going to apologise for that.

The magnitude of discrimination and stigma faced by people with disability in Australia cannot be underestimated. People do not understand disability, and people fear what they don't understand.