Elements and birthdays have been inter.. Oliver Sacks

Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers.

Oliver Sacks

Profession: Doctor
Nationality: British

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I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.

In general, people are afraid to acknowledge hallucinations because they immediately see them as a sign of something awful happening to the brain, whereas in most cases they're not.

With any hallucinations, if you can do functional brain imagery while they're going on, you will find that the parts of the brain usually involved in seeing or hearing - in perception - have become super active by themselves. And this is an autonomous activity; this does not happen with imagination.

I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.

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.

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.

I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

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 was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the youngest, even though now I am almost the oldest person I know.

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 feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever 'completing a life' means.

I think hallucinations need to be discussed. There are all sorts of hallucinations, and then many sorts which are okay, like the ones I think which most of us have in bed at night before we fall asleep, when we can see all sorts of patterns or faces and scenes.

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