“ To be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must recollect ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narra… Oliver Sacks
“ Thinking of my schizophrenic brother, Michael, I asked Shengold if I too was schizophrenic. No, he answered. Was I then, I asked, merely neurotic? No, he answered. I left it there, we left it there, a… Oliver Sacks
“ The real functional machinery of the brain, for Edelman, consists of millions of neuronal groups, organized into larger units or maps. These maps, continually conversing in everchanging, unimaginably… Oliver Sacks
“ Speaking of these attitudes turned Temple’s mind to a parallel: I find a very high correlation, she said, between the way animals are treated and the handicapped.… Georgia is a snake pit—they treat [h… Oliver Sacks
“ Professional musicians, in general, possess what most of us would regard as remarkable powers of musical imagery. Many composers, indeed, do not compose initially or entirely at an instrument but in t… Oliver Sacks
“ Now there is stillness—such a stillness as I have never heard before in all my life. Soon I shall start moving again, and perhaps I will never stop. Oliver Sacks
“ My father called swimming the elixir of life, and certainly it seemed to be so for him: he swam daily, slowing down only slightly with time, until the grand age of ninety-four. I hope I can follow him… Oliver Sacks
“ Individuality is deeply imbued in us from the very start, at the neuronal level. Even at a motor level, researchers have shown, an infant does not follow a set pattern of learning to walk or how to re… Oliver Sacks
“ In his book The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body, Steven Mithen takes this idea further, suggesting that music and language have a common origin, and that a sort of… Oliver Sacks
“ I never took amphetamines again—despite sometimes-intense longings for them (the brain of an addict or an alcoholic is changed for life; the possibility, the temptation, of regression never go away). Oliver Sacks
“ I am very bad at factual exams, yes-or-no questions, but can spread my wings with essays. Oliver Sacks
“ He is man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment. Oliver Sacks
“ He followed this with a letter in which he spoke of the central resonances of a peripheral injury. He went on, You are discovering an entirely new field. . . . Please publish your observations. It may… Oliver Sacks
“ For here is a man who, in some sense, is desperate, in a frenzy. The world keeps disappearing, losing meaning, vanishing - and he must seek meaning, make meaning, in a desperate way, continually inven… Oliver Sacks
“ For 'wellness', naturally is no cause of complaint--people relish it, they enjoy it, they are at the furthest pole from complaint. People complain of feeling ill--not well. Unless, as George Eliot doe… Oliver Sacks
“ Far commoner, and perhaps the most intolerable of all aura symptoms, is intense sudden vertigo accompanied by staggering, overwhelming nausea, and frequently vomiting. The Oliver Sacks
“ By asking why, by seeking meaning (not in any final sense, but in the immediate sense of use or purpose), Darwin found in his botanical work the strongest evidence for evolution and natural selection.… Oliver Sacks
“ After a while the scene started to fade, and I became dimly conscious, once more, that I was in London, stoned, hallucinating Agincourt on the sleeve of my dressing gown. It Oliver Sacks
“ A magic realm of timelessness had been inserted into time, an intensity of newness and presentness, of the sort usually devoured by past and future. Suddenly, wonderfully, I fount myself exempted fro… Oliver Sacks
