736 entries.
Renee Halberg, MSW, LCSW
from Durham, NC
Dear Dr. Sacks,
Your amazing, brilliant, and kind work with humans has inspired and informed the work I do as an ocular oncology clinical social worker at Duke Eye Center. Please know your writings and methods of inquiry have taught so many of us how to be and journey with fellow humans in need. Your writings have made me wonder about what we know and don't know, think, cry, kvetch and smile. Through dear ones and community, your contributions to science and clinical care will live on. May your time and life be filled with what you need.
Stuart Miller
from Utica, NY
Hello Dr. Sacks,
I just heard your podcast interview on Radiolab. Thought you may enjoy our newly release video game called Perios at www.periosworld.com. It is inspired by the Periodic Table of elements. The goal is to "teach" children the Periodic Table and chemistry while having fun.
Laura Brindle
from Iowa City, IA
I recently enjoyed your book, Musicophilia. It made me think of a short story, "The Listener" by John Berry, at ratical.org/ratville/future/listener.html
thanks, Laura
Irene Gironi Carnevale
from Roma, Italia
Thank you for all: for books and for your special humanity. Thank you from me and my son Tommaso, an autistic boy : you will be a bright star for us, forever.
Irene and Tommaso
Karen Galindo
from San Diego, CA
The first book I ever read of yours was An Anthropologist on Mars, for a neurology class I took in university. Your book was one of our assigned readings. It was so interesting and captivating that I read the whole book within a single weekend. Since then I read Musicophilia, and I plan on reading the rest of your work. I shared what I learned from you with my Mom and we still bring it up to this day.
Thank you for all your work.
David M iles-Hanschell
from Glasgow, Scotland
I am currently reading On the Move and am midway through. It is a treat. What a human being. A combination of approachable genius and human frailty. An inspiring teacher.
Sarah Lynne Gershon
Dr. Sacks,
Thank you for your work and writings. I am sad to know you will soon be leaving us and have appreciated your recent reflections on your life and diagnosis. My husband and I are expecting a baby in December and will be naming our son Oliver after you (the name is a little too popular for our liking so we will be calling him Iver for short). I look forward to introducing him to your books when he is old enough :)
Liduina Mourão Tavares
from Fortaleza- Ceará - Brazil
Dr. Sacks,
I am a Brazilian anesthesiologist. I like your books very much.
Thank you for being you.
All the best. Take care.
Thank you,
Dr. Liduina
Martine McCormac-Taylor
from North Balgowlah, NSW, Australia
Dearest Dr. Oliver Sacks,
My son and I became great fans of yours through your exposure on Radio Lab NPR. (although we knew of you before.)
We have enormous respect for your incredible work and your equally incredible work in communicating said work so beautifully to the world!
As role models go, you're our favourite. We adore you as a person; your genuine spirit and your achievements are our inspiration.
Thank you for sharing the eloquent stories of your life, no matter how painful. Hearing them teaches us to continue with our own lives no matter what hurdles appear in our path.
My 16 year old son has high functioning autism and is a deeply intelligent, thoughtful individual. You have inspired us both to live a full life.
So thank you for being the man you are.
Kindest regards, best wishes and pain free love to you.
Martine McCormac-Taylor
Kathy Claycomb
from Crivitz, WI
Thank you for sharing your passion all these years for the wonders of the human body and especially the brain and mind. I particularly enjoyed Musicophilia. I also read "On the Move" (and most of the others) and am so glad that you found love and companionship at long last. So thank you for your insights, for your wonderful example to others of what a compassionate human is capable of doing for others, and for sharing your passion with all of us less lively thinkers. I wish you well with this newest health challenge, and the transition to come.
David Fuys
from Boynton Beach FL
Dear Dr. Sacks:
Having just read On the Move and your NYTimes article The Periodic Table, I am convinced that you are still on the move.
Thank you so much for showing us how motion is important in living our lives to the fullest.
May you enjoy peaceful, magical yet mysteriously beautiful star-filled evenings,
Below is a haiku that your NYTimes article and other writings inspired me to write for you:
Oliver's Legacy Celestial Library
Earthly penned stories
carried heavenly in sacks
now stars in sky's stacks.
Glowing emblems of
eternity, his writings
shine for us to see.
Gaze skyward. Beyond!
Darwinian nurtured visions
spark magical nodes
Exploding patterns
colored coded connections
create consciousness.
Bernette Rudolph
from Brooklyn, New York
Dear Dr. Sacks,
I just finished "On the Move" and was sorry it ended. I am an artist and although I did not understand much of your medical terminology, I did relate to your love, dedication, drive and lust for life. At age seven I decided I would be an artist. I am now eighty six years old and still going strong. I also have kept journals which I rarely look at.
Thanks for your story,
Bernette Rudolph
Toby Mailman
from Brooklyn, New York
I want to send my warm wishes to Dr. Sacks and say before it is too late how much I've enjoyed your books and how much I appreciate the contribution you have made to the world in terms of understanding the human mind, and in terms of spreading compassion and humor to all who have come in contact with you or have had any exposure to you through your books and the media. We are all very fortunate that you have been alive in our time. With affection...
Stephanie B. Harris
from Minneapolis
Best wishes to you Oliver!
I am a half-time chemistry teacher at a local high school also pursuing a Ph.D. in bio-polymer research. Another teacher referred your book, Uncle Tungsten, to me just before summer vacation. I love the book and I am currently rereading it. I have found that I sometimes read small bits and then I need to put the book away because I so cherish the words I have just read and need to let them sink in for a while. The book has also brought back a flood of memories of my own grandfather who had a lab in his basement where he made dentures after the Great Depression. I loved to explore the lab as a young child and though I was not allowed to use most of the equipment in the lab, I would build towns with found items beneath the pine trees in his back yard that I would siphon water through using tubing and glass fittings so that I could study the flow and deposition patterns.
Today I had the thought that if you were having a public reading somewhere – anywhere, I’d love to make the journey (despite also being a single mother of two wonderful teenagers and not having much discretionary income). I actually looked online to see whether you have any upcoming events and learned about your cancer diagnosis. I am so sorry that the world could soon lose such an inspirational figure. Your writing speaks to the heart, not just the mind (though that’s really just something that exists in the ether of the brain)!
I don’t know how I failed to encounter your work earlier in life, but I am overjoyed that there is more to read. I have loved learning about your family and your adventures and I look forward learning more. You have given us a treasure! I just hope that all of us, your readers, can inspire you in some small ways in these days ahead, as you have inspired us and added a richness to our lives. We want to help make your life better, and what we really want is for your cancer to go away and leave us our Oliver Sacks!
Thank you for the Oliver Sacks filter through which we can view the world – in the way that one can see things just a bit differently through stained glass, or a spectroscope!
Meghan Kovelsky
from Brooklyn
Dr. Sacks,
I never knew that neurology is a hobby but apparently it is. I've read all your books, Dr. Sacks, and I'm hooked on neurology. Especially the beautiful stories you tell about your patients. You are eloquent and profoundly readable and I thank you as a reader and as an ever present fan. I hope you are comfortable and safe and that you have no pain. Please take care.
Much love,
Meghan Kovelsky
Robin
from Cedar Creek
Dear Dr. Sacks,
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Your work, your writing and your irrepressible joy and curiosity are inspiration and solace both.
You so richly deserve the love that has come to you late in life.
M. E. Roche
from Harrisburg, PA USA
Dear Dr. Sacks,
I am a horrendous procrastinator, intending to write to you since the disclosure of your cancer; it is only now, obviously, that I've finally sat to do it. I am unsure whether you'll read this personally, but have the strongest hopes that its message of respect, admiration, and gratitude will be conveyed to you, along with the many thousands of others being sent.
Your achievements have been gifts for so many; what I treasure and respect even more than those is your attitude toward the human condition in all its fragility, beauty, and wondrous strangeness. Your respect and acceptance, which I first saw in "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat," has been a reference point and a comfort, time and time again.You will indeed leave this world better than you found it, and one cannot have a finer tribute than that.
Wishing you blessings and comfort,
Mary Ellen Roche
Linda
from Redwood city
Dr. Sacks,
I want to thank you for your tremendous work as a physician. Additionally, for being a wonderful author that allows us all to enjoy your research and insights.
We all will pass, however you leave a long legacy of warm humanity along with insightful psychological and neurological discoveries. Please accept my heartfelt admiration and thanks for your good works and the mensch you model for all of us! I pray for a peaceful and pain free completion of your life.
Rest well.
Joan Smart
from Calgary
Dr. Sacks,
I was sad to read your health-related news in the New York Times. Your work has been so valuable to so many; those you have mentored will continue and find the solutions to many of the brain's puzzles, from Asperger's to dementia: Awakenings, Musicophilia, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat--just a few of your very great contributions. I will include thoughts of you in metta meditation. I feel very fortunate that you took the time to make your learnings so accessible. Thanks.
Linn Mo
from Trondheim, Norway
Dear Dr. Sacks,
Thank you so much for your books. I have them all, and have enjoyed them immensely, reading most of them over and over again. I see in the New York Times that you are on your way now to a better place. Go in peace then, in the knowledge that you have made this world a better place by your life's works.
Sincerely,
your fan Linn Mo
