Quote

When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, smoked salmon and Bach.

Oliver Sacks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Oliver Sacks
Age: 82 †
Born: 1933
Born: July 9
Died: 2015
Died: August 30
Chemist
Neurologist
Physician Writer
Science Communicator
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Oliver Wolf Sacks
Salmon
Answered
Favorite
Asked
Told
Five
Things
Smoked
World
Bach

More quotes by Oliver Sacks

Image
For 'wellness', naturally, is no cause for complaint - people relish it, they enjoy it, they are at the furthest pole from complaint. People complain of feeling ill - not well ... Thus, though a patient will scarcely complain of being 'very well', they may become suspicious if they feel 'too well'.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Studies by Andrew Newberg and others have shown that long-term practice of meditation produces significant alterations in cerebral blood flow in parts of the brain related to attention, emotion, and some autonomic functions.
Oliver Sacks
Image
It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me.
Oliver Sacks
Image
We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Music is part of being human.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Some people with Tourette's have flinging tics- sudden, seemingly motiveless urges or compulsions to throw objects..... (I see somewhat similar flinging behaviors- though not tics- in my two year old godson, now in a stage of primal antinomianism and anarchy)
Oliver Sacks
Image
I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever completing a life means.
Oliver Sacks
Image
One might say that science itself, and civilization and art, are all about different orderings of the world - to contain it, and to make it in some sense intelligible, communicable. And bearable.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Sign language is the equal of speech, lending itself equally to the rigorous and the poetic, to philosophical analysis or to making love.
Oliver Sacks
Image
In terms of brain development, musical performance is every bit as important educationally as reading or writing.
Oliver Sacks
Image
I think there's probably always been visions and voices, and these were variously ascribed to the divine or demonic or the muses. I think many poets still feel they depend on an inner voice, or a voice which tells them what to do.
Oliver Sacks
Image
The rhythm of music is very, very important for people with Parkinson's. But it's also very important with other sorts of patients, such as patients with Tourette's syndrome. Music helps them bring their impulses and tics under control. There is even a whole percussion orchestra made up exclusively of Tourette's patients.
Oliver Sacks
Image
At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.
Oliver Sacks
Image
I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.
Oliver Sacks
Image
I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in the act of painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive, disoriented, and out of it.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Music is...a fundamental way of expressing our humanity - and it is often our best medicine.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Darwin speculated that “music tones and rhythms were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph” and that speech arose, secondarily, from this primal music.
Oliver Sacks
Image
It really is a very odd business that all of us, to varying degrees, have music in our heads.
Oliver Sacks