SOURCE: Sacks, Oliver, and David Lazar. “An Interview with Oliver Sacks: Above All, the Paradox.” Ohio Review 54 (1995): 109-18.

In the following interview, Sacks discusses his interest in disease and treatment, his writing process, and the influence of W. H. Auden on his life and work.

[Lazar]: One thing that comes up in your work over and over again for me is the shadow of Martin Buber. In much of what you talk about and much of what you seem to reach for in Awakenings and elsewhere, there is a kind of hook between you and the patient, and between the patient and himself or herself, and between you and the audience. There is a kind of play with the I-You relationship, and even the I-Thou relationship at its most secondary and most metaphysical.

[Sacks]: I used to read a lot of Buber once. My bookshelves are strewn with...