736 entries.
Edward Weinberger
from New York, NY
I miss you Oliver. I love you, dear friend.
Ed.
Barbara Muglia
from Dunellen, NJ
For the last 23 years it has been my privilege to work with a class of 17-21 year-old multiply disabled or autistic students. A day has not passed in any of those 23 years that I have not stared at one of them and wished aloud that I could but visit that brain and experience from its viewpoint, the world around. But alas, that adventure has not been something science could satisfy. Thank you for making such a voyage a possibility with your wonderful perspectives of the many neurological novelties of the human brain. I have them all in my library. I wish you well in your next adventure. May you embrace it with peace and the knowledge you have done well.
Allegra Jordan
from Chapel Hill, NC
Dear Dr. Sacks,
I live down the street from the lemur center. I have also worked with the wonderful Dr. Ray Barfield of Duke pediatric oncology whose TEDx talk "brain surgery with words" I had the honor of producing. It's about how to share with people that they are in the last chapter of life. It's brilliant as is Dr. Ray. If you need anything on your trip to the Lemur Center, my e-mail is appended. Thank you for all your lives work. May you have joy every minute of life, and may you be surprised with beauty beyond the mortal coil.
Peter Haas
from Acworth, New Hampshire
Dr Sacks,
Thanks so much for sharing your many insights with the rest of us. Prompted by your recent piece in the Times about mishearing, I offer you a favorite joke of my late mother's:
Three old ladies on a London double decker bus. The first says, "Is this Wembley?" the second replies, "No, I think it's Thursday." The third says, "Me too! Let's get off and have a drink."
I raise a glass to you and the stars and say "Bon voyage! No regrets."
-Peter
Stephen Greene
from Bel Air, MD
Dear Oliver Sacks,
I received your book Musicophilia as a gift several years ago, and it truly has been gift in terms of the insights it offers. Thank you for all of your wonderful work, which has touched so many lives.
I just finished reading your New York Times column, “My Periodic Table.” I missed your posting earlier in the year and was unaware of your terminal disease. I hope that when your time comes you are able to see the stars as you desire.
You make no mention of any faith journey. There is a school of thought in theology known as universalism, which, as a friend explained to me, posits that “it is God's intention to redeem preserve, love into eternity every sentient being ever created…. There will be a hell, but its' population will be zero.” I pray that is so. For myself, I strongly believe I have experienced the presence of God and I pray that experience for you as well, before you undertake your journey through the tunnel of light.
All the best to you,
Stephen Greene
Miguel Martinez
from Ellensburg
Mr. Sacks, from the bottom of my heart thank you for all of your work, writing, and interviews over the years. I wish you the best. I look forward to sharing your writings with my children.
Jo-Ann Rapaport
from Lake George, New York
Hello Dr. Sacks,
I've been a fan of yours from the moment we met in the late 1960's. I've enjoyed reading your books and essays -- and particularly enjoyed your latest book "On the Move".
In the late 1960's I was the speech pathologist at the Lubin Rehabilitation Center of Albert Einstein College Hospital and was asked to conduct speech and language evaluations on many of your patients taking what I called scoopfuls of L-Dopa. And sadly I am the same person that realized the unfortunate paranoia that eventually evolved.
You (and your motorcycle) were famous. Upon reading your latest memoir it was amazing to realize that you rode your bike to and from the Bronx from your Greenwich Village home. I traveled by compact car the same route from my Upper West Side apartment and found traveling the Cross Bronx Expressway terrifying.
I'm so glad to read this latest piece on your connection to the Periodic Table. Hopefully this upcoming treatment will give you more good time. Yet your candid expression of your thoughts, feelings and behaviors during this most challenging time for you -- are enlightening for me (and I'm sure for many others).
Please continue to write and share going forward. I genuinely look forward to your next piece.
With great admiration,
Jo-Ann
Joanne Dale
from St. Catharines, ON
Thank you so much for your many gifts over the years, but most especially for helping to cultivate my curiosity and humanity. You are one of a kind and will be sadly missed, but will always be very fondly remembered. Peace to you and your love. I'm so happy you found each other.
Catherine
from Plano, Texas
Dear Dr. Sacks:
One day I listened to a random podcast on Radiolab, which was an interview with you in honor of your 80th birthday. I was so moved by it, I listened to it again. And then again. And again. And now I listen to it any time I want to be comforted by the familiarity of your story. I am particularly touched by your work because my mother has Parkinson's Disease. But mostly I'm in awe of your humanity and your complete embrace of life.
Suvendrini Christopher-Schuhmann
from Klamath Falls, OR
Greetings Dr. Sacks,
I write with the knowledge that whatever I have to say will be woefully inadequate in the face of what you are experiencing these last few months. My gratitude and appreciation of you and what you have to say and write knows no bounds. Thank you for taking me deeper into myself and granting me the moments of depth and thought that can be so difficult to find in life.Thank you for allowing me the opportunities of great emotion and inspiration as I connect and experience your words. Thank you for letting me see meaning and purpose. As you courageously share your end of life experience, I honor you and bless you as you transform and continue on your journey.
With deep respect and appreciation to a wonderful teacher who I have followed for decades and continue to be inspired by as you pass on. You are in my prayers.
Leslie Ehrlich
from Ithaca, NY
Dear Dr. Sacks,
You are the doctor we would all love to have--caring, perceptive, and willing to share your extremely valuable insights. I'll never forget how my life changed when I read "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." It illuminated the world for me. I have a friend who is presently a neurologist in Portland, OR. When he was young and was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would say "Dr. Sacks".
I am sorry that you have metastatic cancer, and are enduring a time of declining health and of profound self-evaluation, which you have generously shared. The world is full of wonders. I hope you will not ignore the wisdom of the entire human race, which almost without exception believes that life does not end when we die.
I am the potter who made a bowl with your name on it, and I met you when you were at our farmers' market in the company of Roald Hoffman. You have lived and incomparable, worthwhile life, and will be profoundly missed.
Jeanne Fleming
from Rhinebeck, NY
Today's piece in the Times brought me to tears. You are teaching us all so much. Today it brought back my memories of seeing Peter Brook's The Man Who and when I first started to follow closely and love you and your good work.
Allison
from Kirkland, WA
Dear Dr. Sacks,
I was sad to learn of your illness in February. Since that time, I have been re-discovering your books that so captivated me when I first discovered them as a college student. Whenever I listen to Radiolab and you are mentioned as a guest, I always know I am in for a treat.
I hope you enjoy the visit to North Carolina. That is my home state, and I worked for a summer at Duke University's Primate Center. They are fascinating creatures, and it is particularly profound when a ring tail sits, legs out, hands on its knees and fixes you with a penetrating, amber stare.
I am looking forward to "On the Move" as my next read, and I wish you love, joy and wonder in your remaining time.
Sincerely,
Allison
Meredith Broderikc
from Staten Island, New York
We actually met at my college graduation years ago. You were the speaker. I read your column in February, and then today in the Times. I have as everyone else enjoyed your work and mind for many years. Two things, I am my whole life moved by death and dying having lost my mother at 10 to cancer. I always felt I knew what the story was about younger than most people on the planet.
As I grew up in the shadow of family illness, my mother was fairly sick from the time I went to school, I created my own religion, trying to imagine how all beings, indeed all molecules were connected. A lot of this focused on trees. Science education as a child learning about the water cycle, atomic structure, chemistry and energy further led me to indulge in this thought, and though I am not religious I often sit in my backyard and imagine my connection to a bird or leaf or lightning bug. Last night in fact I imagined the lightning bugs buzzing happily outside my hot tub were at very least related to the lightning bugs of my childhood, and so for me this was a kind of family reunion. Of course this made me think of your statement about lemurs and their relation to you in the column today.
I want you to know that though we are not related in my personal religion of no words we are indeed relatives as you are with those lemurs. I wish the best for you and I am an atheist or at least an agnostic so I cannot say god bless you, but I can say thank you for today's column in the Times and for all your work, and of course my college commencement speech.
Florence
Dear Dr Sacks,
Thank you for sharing so much of yourself in On the Move, now Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. Also very much appreciated your TED talk on hallucinations. I too have tinnitus and visual migraines - now I hear I am in good company! Thanks too for clarifying differences between psychotic and harmless hallucinatory experience - makes perfect sense to me to see first as intrusive and malignant, the other as a movie. I like the notion of the 'theatre of the mind' being brought to life by the 'machinery of the brain'.
With love and best wishes,
Florence
Duncan Livingstone
from Lancing, Sussex, UK
i have worked in hospitals in the UK for 33 years and have been feeling somewhat jaded of late. As I was driving out to visit a patient yesterday morning, I was listening to BBC Radio 4 and they were reading your autobiography. I was spellbound, inspired and perhaps a little shamed too by my own occasional reluctance to question convention in the interests of patients. Thank you so much - you have recharged my "caring" batteries. I look forward to reading your works.
robert bristow-johnson
from Burlington, VT
There are at least two living sages that I very much want to meet personally, shake their hands, and maybe sit at their feet and listen and I reasonably fear I will not, at least on this planet: Huston Smith and Oliver Sacks.
Doc, i love hearing you on RadioLab and i have no idea what you believe or think about metaphysics. I have only a slightly better idea what I think. Nonetheless, it's a journey we all take and I, for one, will trust in God whatever he/she/it is.
i *do* hope to actually greet you on the other side.
God bless ya.
love from Vermont,
r b-j
Darwin Green
from Bellevue, Nebraska
Dr. Sacks,
You have inspired me with your books to become a humane and empathetic neuropsychologist. I will, in my professional career, always consider the warmth and humanity you have conveyed through your works to any and all clients I may have in the future. Your life has gifted the world with wisdom, wonder, and wit, and it inspires me to do the same when my time comes. Thank you.
Charles Jackson
from Louisville
I have enjoyed several of your books, but my favorite is the book on ferns. I see the Japanese fern in our backyard and think of you. Also, a good friend began to have hallucinations in her 80s, and your book reassured her that she was not losing her mind. You are a shining light!
Debora
from Roma, Italia
I learned a lot from your books.
Thank you for your humanity.
Debora
