Thursday, February 19, 2015

Oliver Sacks

A hero of mine, author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, has been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. I have read everything he has published, I think, except one book. I have even read his text books. Uncle Tungsten was a favourite in which he eulogized his teachers.

He wrote an op-ed in the New York Times today expressing how he plans to spend the last months of his life: deepening friendships, saying goodbye, writing, and traveling. “I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude…

“I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers


“Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

Sad. Sad. Sad.

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