- Born
- Died
- Birth nameOliver Wolf Sacks
- Oliver Sacks was born on July 9, 1933 in London, England, UK. He was a writer and actor, known for Awakenings (1990), At First Sight (1999) and Wolf. He died on August 30, 2015 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Lived in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he swam in the local YMCA pool regularly.
- One of his first cousins was Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat, author, scholar, narrator of the nine-part TV series "Heritage" (1987) and another TV series. He completed one film, "The Brink of Peace".
- He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to medicine.
- [interview in Newsweek magazine, 8/20/84] If migraine patients have a common and legitimate second complaint besides their migraines, it is that they have not been listened to by physicians. Looked at, investigated, drugged, charged, but not listened to.
- [interview in Newsweek magazine, 8/20/84] There is only one cardinal rule: One must always LISTEN to the patient.
- [on discovering that the study of modern chemistry was more theoretical than tactile] This seemed an awful prospect, for I - at least - needed to smell and touch and feel, to place myself, my senses in the middle of the perceptual world. I had dreamed of becoming a chemist, but the chemistry that really stirred me was the lovingly detailed, naturalistic, descriptive chemistry of the nineteenth century, not the new chemistry of the quantum age.
- [on his patient Spalding Gray] On several occasions he talked about what he called "a creative suicide". On one occasion, when he was being interviewed, he thought that the interview might be culminated with a "dramatic and creative suicide". I was at pains to say that he would be much more creative alive than dead.
- It may not he enough to create, to contribute, to have influenced others if one feels, as I do now, that the very culture in which one was nourished, and to which one has given one's best in return, is itself threatened. Though I am supported and stimulated by my friends, by readers around the world, by memories of my life and by the joy that writing gives me, I have, as many of us must have, deep fears about the well-being and even survival of our world.
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