Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) I would like it to be thought that I had listened carefully to what patients and others have told me, that I’ve tried to imagine what it was like for them, and that I tried to convey this. And, to use a biblical term, bear witness.
Oliver Sacks On Gratitude
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an …
Marcelo Gleiser On Listening
Marcelo Gleiser (March 19, 1959 -) We are a story, each of us. And a story with no listener is the same as silence, as oblivion. Some stories are harder to listen to, or can't be listened to in ordinary ways, and so, take a very special kind of listener. (Speaking of Oliver Sacks)
Oliver Sacks On Nothing
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) Nature abhors a vacuum—and so do we. The idea of a void—of emptiness, nothingness, spacelessness, placelessness, all such “lessness”—is at once abhorrent and inconceivable, and yet it haunts us in the strangest, most paradoxical way. As Beckett writes, “Nothing is more real than nothing.”
Oliver Sacks On Truth, Beauty And The Periodic Table
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) I had an overwhelming sense of Truth and Beauty when I saw the periodic table, a sense that this was not a mere human construct, arbitrary, but an actual vision of the eternal cosmic order, and that any future discoveries and advances, whatever they might add, …
Continue reading "Oliver Sacks On Truth, Beauty And The Periodic Table"
Oliver Sacks On Healing And Nature
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.
Oliver Sacks On Perspective
Oliver Sacks (July 9, 1933 –August 30, 2015) I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global …
Oliver Sacks On Thinking
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) I say I love writing but really it is thinking I love — the rush of thoughts — new connections in the brain being made. And it comes out of the blue…In such moments: I feel such love of the world, love of thinking.
Oliver Sacks On The Sabbath
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 – August 30, 2015) And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I …
Oliver Sacks On Ideas
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) All of us, to some extent, borrow from others, from the culture around us. Ideas are in the air, and we may appropriate, often without realizing, the phrases and language of the times. We borrow language itself; we did not invent it. We found it, we …
Oliver Sacks On Creativity
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled. It is a gamble as all creative projects must be, for the new direction may not turn out to …
Oliver Sacks On Sudden Insight
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 - August 30, 2015) To be full of strength and vigor one moment and virtually helpless the next, in the pink and pride of health one moment and a cripple the next, with all one’s powers and faculties one moment and without them the next – such a change, …
Oliver Sacks On Living
Oliver Sacks (July 09, 1933 – August 30, 2015) The most we can do is to write — intelligently, creatively, evocatively — about what it is like living in the world at this time.
