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320b954
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Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.
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Oliver Sacks |
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254665c
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If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self--himself--he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
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Oliver Sacks |
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122c537
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We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
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cognition
senses
sociality
community
communication
speech
thought
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Oliver Sacks |
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f26ac99
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If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as ..
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individuality
humanity
human-condition
uniqueness
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Oliver Sacks |
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1ac81c6
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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 intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers
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gratitude
death
life
love
inspirational
oliver-sacks
thinking
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Oliver Sacks |
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ef5cf66
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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 intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous priv..
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gratitude
life
love
inspirational
oliver-sacks
thinking
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Oliver Sacks |
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0b2e4f2
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There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate--the genetic and neural fate--of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and be..
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Oliver Sacks |
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92f49fd
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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 narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self."
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Oliver Sacks |
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8e62a1d
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The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain...Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves.
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Oliver Sacks |
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6152515
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Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.
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arts
feelings
music
neuroscience
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Oliver Sacks |
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285c704
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he wanted to do, to be, to feel- and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose- in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'.
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Oliver Sacks |
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600ba53
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Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
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Oliver Sacks |
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4a76167
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There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balanc..
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science
music
songs
hypothesis
neuroscience
theories
hypotheses
psychology
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Oliver Sacks |
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a8aedac
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Dangerously well'-- what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling 'too well
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Oliver Sacks |
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fe1ecc4
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The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds - for the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual, are absolutely, the strongest in our being: stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease.
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Oliver Sacks |
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1703162
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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 inventing, throwing bridges of meaning over abysses of meaninglessness, the chaos that yawns continually beneath him.
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meaninglessness
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Oliver Sacks |
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fc52d0f
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Very young children love and demand stories, and can understand complex matters presented as stories, when their powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost nonexistent.
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fiction
narrative
storytelling
stories
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Oliver Sacks |
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ca45e47
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It really is a very odd business that all of us, to varying degrees, have music in our heads.
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Oliver Sacks |
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31d94e4
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But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned,' whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned -- the man who knew it, or the man who did not?
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science
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Oliver Sacks |
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b177d07
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dh fqd rjlun rjlan 'w `ynan , fhw y`rf 'nh fqd rijlan 'w `ynan. wlkn dh fqd nfsan - nfsh- flys bmknh 'n y`rf dhlk, l'nh lm y`d mwjwdan hnk ly`rf
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Oliver Sacks |
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3183a76
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The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace--
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music
grace
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Oliver Sacks |
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4a624d6
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One must go to Dostoievsky who experienced on occasion ecstatic epileptic auras to which he attached momentous significance, to find an adequate historical parallel. "There are moments, and it is only a matter of five or six seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony ... a terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than fi..
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Oliver Sacks |
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f961d14
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The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
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Oliver Sacks |
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54509b0
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But who was more tragic, or who was more damned--the man who knew it, or the man who did not?
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Oliver Sacks |
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617d238
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dh kn ldyn lSb , wljml , wlqw@ , wlmwhb@ , wdh wjdn lshhr@ , wlthrw@ , wlHZw@ , wlrD~ , fmn lshl 'n nkwn lTf , w'n nlq~ l`lm bqlb wdwd . lkn d`n fqT nfqd lHZw@ , wljml , wlqw@ , wlSH@ ; d`n njd 'nfsn mrD~ , wt`s , wmn dwn 'ml wDH blshf ; Hynh fqT stumtHan qw@ Htmln wshkhSytn l'khlqy@ , l~ lHd l'qS~
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Oliver Sacks |
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9ef7797
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dh 'rdn 'n n`rf flnan fnHn ns'l : " m qSth - qSth lHqyqy@ l'`mq ? - " l'n kl wHd mn hw syr@ wqS@ . kl wHd mn hw Hky@ fryd@ ytm trkybh bstmrr wdwn w`y bwsTtn wmn khlln wfyn mn khll drktn wmsh`rn w'fkrn w'f`ln wlys 'qlh bwsT@ Hdythn wHkytn lmnTwq@ . nHn l nkhtlf `n b`Dn b`Dan kthyran bywlwjyan wfsywlwjyan , 'm trykhyan , kqSS , fkl mn fryd !"
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Oliver Sacks |
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0b70e2b
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What an odd thing it is to see an entire species -- billions of people -- playing with, listening to meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call 'music.' (-- The Overlords, from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End)
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music
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Oliver Sacks |
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0985c91
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When I was twelve, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report, "Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far," and this was often the case."
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Oliver Sacks |
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b47322b
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ymknn 'n nr~ bshwl@ fy lakhryn m l nhtm 'w njrw' `l~ rw'yth fy 'nfsn
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Oliver Sacks |
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9a1b6de
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Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, the total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, too easily.
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understanding
lies
grasping
ideas
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Oliver Sacks |
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743ae19
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Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly active, and if it was not getting its usual stimulation..., it would create its own stimulation in the form of hallucinations.
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science
music
musical-hallucinations
hallucinations
neuroscience
psychology
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Oliver Sacks |
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06e7316
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To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or at least the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology or in states of mind which allow us to travel to ..
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Oliver Sacks |
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ccf9b5a
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Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understandin..
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Oliver Sacks |
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41aabb9
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One must drop all presuppositions and dogmas and rules - for there only lead to stalemate or disaster; one must cease to regard all patients as replicas, and honor each one with individual reactions and propensities; and, in this way, with the patient as one's equal, one's co-explorer, not one's puppet, one may find therapeutic ways which are better than other ways, tactics which can be modified as occasion requires.
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Oliver Sacks |
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80bbf6a
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I have to remember, too, that sex is one of those areas--like religion and politics--where otherwise decent and rational people may have intense, irrational feelings.
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Oliver Sacks |
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c08aa33
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My father, who lived to ninety-four, often said that the eighties had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective. One has had a long experience of life, not only one's own life, but others' too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities. One has seen grand theories ..
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Oliver Sacks |
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0305985
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And so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: 'A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, and see a profound change.' Memory, mental activity, mind alone, could not hold him; but moral attention and action could hold him completely.
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Oliver Sacks |
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dd8a066
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I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one's life as well, when one can feel that one's work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.
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sabbath
rest
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Oliver Sacks |
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5764acb
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At the end of our visit, Fleisher agreed to play something on my piano, a beautiful old 1894 Bechstein concert grand that I had grown up with, my father's piano. Fleisher sat at the piano and carefully, tenderly, stretched each finger in turn, and then, with arms and hands almost flat, he started to play. He played a piano transcription of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze," as arranged for piano by Egon Petri. Never in its 112 years, I though..
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music
piano
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Oliver Sacks |
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7bfa1cc
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Perception is never purely in the present - it has to draw on experience of the past;(...).We all have detailed memories of how things have previously looked and sounded, and these memories are recalled and admixed with every new perception.
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Oliver Sacks |
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91949f8
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Astounded--and indifferent--for he was a man who, in effect, had no 'day before'.
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Oliver Sacks |
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37da6c7
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Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov's, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.
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Oliver Sacks |
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88e771c
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The 'secret' of Shostakovich, it was suggested--by a Chinese neurologist, Dr Dajue Wang--was the presence of a metallic splinter, a mobile shell-fragment, in his brain, in the temporal horn of the left ventricle. Shostakovich was very reluctant, apparently, to have this removed: Since the fragment had been there, he said, each time he leaned his head to one side he could hear music. His head was filled with melodies--different each time--wh..
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Oliver Sacks |
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d06c9db
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The act of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place--irrespective of my subject--where I am totally absorbed and oblivious to distracting thoughts, worries, preoccupations, or indeed the passage of time. In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and that I have been writing all day..
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Oliver Sacks |