Oliver Sacks Quotes

Every moment of my life has a soundtrack, so I never know when some song is going to jump me by surprise and bring the memory alive.

I know I get a real kick, an emotional charge, out of playing a song I haven't played for 10 years. It just takes you back to that point in your life.

There's nothing that can lock a memory in your mind more distinctly than with a piece of music. It's so easy to remember something so vividly and so perfectly when you score it to something.

And I'm moved, it's so beautiful. Not what I wrote, but to have it given back like this. To have her remember the words and the tune. To hear it in her voice.

Funny how a melody sounds like a memory.

I honestly don't remember the book well enough to register any surprise about anything. I don't remember anything being shocking to me.

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

Sometimes an idea from six years ago will come to me out of the blue. And maybe I haven't even seen the lyrics I wrote down, but I'll just have this physical memory of having written it, and in my mind I can see the piece of paper, and the words I wrote down, and then by muscle memory, I'll remember the chords that go along with it.

I know this music from memory, not from the music.

Memory is useful because it gives us a sense of continuity. But memory is also imprisoning because it conditions us in predictable ways.

Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!

The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives.

Jesus, music has always been my first love. I use music in my work because it's the fastest way to an emotional place. You hear a song, and that memory comes right back-- you're there... Making music is immediate, and it's all about you. If you're playing guitar, the feeling comes through-- the way you bend the note, the intensity with which you hit the strings. With making films, although it's real emotion, it's false emotion. You're lying.

Some memories are best absorbed through your eyes in real time, even if you have no record of it later. Because then you can access that memory and how you felt in that moment. If you're looking at your cellphone screen, taking a video of something that is otherwise unforgettable, watching it later will not recover the emotion you would have had, had you witnessed it directly.

I am humble. It was an honor, and I cried the first time I saw the film His Way. Because to have people of that caliber, like Julia Roberts, take the time to sit down and give a day or two of their lives to a film about me, that they're not getting paid for, is pretty extraordinary.

In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation and trivialization to feel engaged, connected, purposeful, ready to give, to engage, to care, to learn.

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it's a pity we use it so little.

I've met quite a number of people in my career, but I do have an extraordinary memory. And even though they may drift into the periphery of my memory, I can bring them right back when I need them.

If you were feeling sad right now and you recall a sad - or, a very happy memory from the past, it will be tinged with more sadness based on your current feeling. So we felt like that was actually on solid scientific ground .

People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.

I'm very musically inclined. My parents were opera singers. As a young child, I could hear operas and I knew if they were sad, or if they reminded me of something, or they brought back a memory.

I always call performing live "giving the people the medicine," because when you're engaged in it, you can feel the sort of soul magic being exchanged between the performer and the audience.

The food that memory gives to eat is bitter to the taste, and it is only with the teeth of hope that we can bear to bite it.

I remember in one of my early films I had a drunk scene. It was Kiss Me Goodbye, with Sally Field, and I was playing this kind of nerdy guy who gets drunk and dances. And so I thought, "Oh well, I'll just get drunk and do the dance." And it was wonderful, but then I had the rest of the day, and the next day. So I learned that you don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.