ZEENZ/pix

Christ do I gotta be like that 😀

Oliver Sacks quotes/01

OLIVER SACKS QUOTES 

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.”

Music can lift us 

out of depression 

or move us to tears

it's a remedy/a tonic

-orange juice for the ear

For many neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to life movement, speech,  

For them, music isn't.      a luxury it's necessary.

― Oliver Sacks

“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 can't know

it, because he

isn't there any

 longer to know it.”

― Oliver Sacks, 

“We speak 

not only to 

tell other 

people 

what we

 think, but

 to tell ourselves

 what we think. 

Speech/part of thought.”

― Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices

If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'-

Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually/unconsciously/

by/through/in us through  

-our spoken narrations.

-perceptions,  

- discourse, 

-feelings,  

-thoughts, 

-actions

Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--each of us unique.”

Life on a day-to-day basis isn't sufficient for 

us we need;

-transcendence

-to find meaning

-understanding

-explanation

-escape

-love

-work

-to see over-all patterns in our lives

-hope, 

-the sense of a future.

-freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves/

to rise above our immediate surroundings.

-a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or 
-transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear

-a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, 

-a more intense sense of the here and now, 

-the beauty and value of the world we live in.”

― Oliver Sacks

I can't pretend I'm without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. 

-I've loved and been loved;

-I've been given much  

-/given something in return; 

-I've read 

-traveled 

-thought 

-written. 

-I've had 
 intercourse 
w/ the world, 
the special intercourse
 of writers and readers.😀

Above all, I've been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet. That

in itself has

 been an 

enormous 

privilege/ 

 adventure.

― Oliver Sacks, Gratitude

“In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy/physiology/

biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.”

― Oliver W. Sacks

“MUSIC  IS  PART OF BEING HUMAN.”

Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another

person’s eyes.”

― Oliver Sacks

There will be no one like us when we are 

gone. There is no one like anyone else ever.When people die they can't be replaced. 

They leave holes that  can't  be filled.

It's the 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 CAN'T PRETEND I'M 
W/OUT FEAR. BUT MY PREDOMINANT FEELING IS ONE OF GRATITUDE. 

“To be ourselves 

we must have

ourselves/possess 

if need be 

-re-possess our 

life-stories. 

One must “recollect” a continuous inner

narrative, to maintain one's identity, one's self.”😀

“At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.”😀

― Oliver Sacks

“The inexpressible 

depth of music, so easy

to understand yet so inexplicable/due to the 

fact that it reproduces 

all theemotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality / remote from its pain...✔

Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves.”

Music uniquely among the arts is 

both completely 

abstract/profoundly

 emotional. It has a 

unique power to

 express inner 

states/feelings. 

Music can pierce 

the heart directly it 

needs no mediation

― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: 

Tales of Music and the Brain

“There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself.

Poetry/ballads/songs are full of repetition. Nursery rhymes/little chants/songs used to teach  children have 

choruses and refrains.

 We are attracted to

 repetition, even as

 adults; we want 

the stimulus and

 the reward again 

   and again. In

 music we get it. 

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised shouldn't complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability ✔

It really is a very odd business that all of us, to varying degrees, have music in our heads.”

― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain😀

There is certainly a 

universal/ unconscious propensity to

impose a rhythm even 

when one hears a series of identical sounds at constant intervals... 

The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a

blessing or a grace.

Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own.this took
the form of musical hallucinations/ mostly musical memories from her earlier life. 

The brain needed to stay incessantly active.

If it wasn't getting its usual stimulation it would create its own stimulation 
in the form of hallucinations.”

Never in its 112 years, I thought, had this piano been played by such a master. I had 
the feeling that Fleisher has sized up the piano's character/ perhaps its idiosyncrasies w/in seconds he had matched 
his playing to the instrument

Waking consciousness is dreaming – but dreaming constrained by external reality”

― Oliver Sacks

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.”

― Oliver Sacks

In Freud's words, 'Work and Love'.

He wanted:

-to be, 

-to feel- 

- sense,

- purpose-

and could

not find.

― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

The brain is more than an assemblage/ autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. 

Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact w/dozens or hundreds of others their total integration creating a vastly complicated orchestra w/thousands of instruments an orchestra/conductitself w/

an ever changing score and repertoire.”

― Oliver Sacks

Very young children love and demand stories. They under-

stand complexities. When these are pre-sented/stories a childs powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms are almost nonexistent.”

“For here is a man who, in some sense, is desperate, in a frenzy. 

-The world keeps disappearing, 

-losing meaning, 

-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.”

(we must grow our wings on the way down)

Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well”

Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.”

✔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.”

To know that you do not know is the best.

To think you know when you do not is a disease.

Recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free of it.” 

― Lao Tzu