Oliver Sacks Quotes

I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.

I realized I am living an amazing, gorgeous, large life. I want to share this, and that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about.

There are moments when I can't believe I'm as old as I am. But I feel better physically than I did 10 years ago. I don't think, Oh God, I'm missing something.

I think because I became a mom later in life, everything in life means more.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others.

I stopped drinking a few years ago, and drinking was a big help with me making music, because drinking gives you courage. But it also makes you reckless, and that's the trouble. You can get away with that your 20s, but not in your 60s, and I'll be 70 next year. Life is a small space now, much more intimate. I'm not out there in the world anymore, but I'm watching.

Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you.

And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61]

What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?

Rejoice in the abundance of being able to awaken each morning and experience a new day. Be glad to be alive, to be healthy, to have friends, to be creative, to be a living example of the joy of living. Live to your highest awareness. Enjoy your transformationa l process.

This has been a wonderful life, absolutely terrific. There are very few things that I would go back and do differently, if I had that control.

Imagination has to do with one's awareness of the reality of other people as well as of one's own reality. Imagination is a bridge between the provincialism of the self and the great world.

I live life and I don't take it for granted.

When you're in morgue you're seeing life that no longer exists. It gives you an appreciation when you look someone in the eye, you shake their hand, and you hug your friends, your girlfriend, your family. It just gives you an appreciation for the life that surrounds you. At the same time you understand how fragile it is. That you don't need to be an idiot or get so angry at times.

In terms of my life, I guess I want to share whatever I've learned really, which is basically one thing: know yourself, look for yourself, know what to look for, cherish it, be honest, be authentic, even if it hurts your feelings. That's not bad.

They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves.

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.

Each year I become more mindful of being thankful for each life experience.

if you tell yourself the great lie of bad art-that you are in charge-your chance at the truth will be lost. The truth isn't always pretty.

If you're a person and care about other people - I don't think I have any sort of special understanding or anything, I think any feeling person would experience similar things if given the same opportunities to see the things I've been lucky enough to see and meet the people I've been lucky enough to meet.

Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related.

When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.

If you have to go back through your day in your head, try to go back to only the good things. Look at those, and what you did well. Otherwise, life kind of passes you by.

At my age you find yourself looking back from time to time and you begin to appreciate some of the things that happened to you.