SOURCE: Sacks, Oliver, and Tracy Cochran. “Oliver Sacks: In Search of the Truth of Being.” Publishers Weekly 248, no. 40 (1 October 2001): 32-3.

In the following interview, Cochran identifies the search for truth as the central concern of Sacks's writings.

At first, the famous neurologist and author Oliver Sacks hangs back like a shy animal. It is Kate Edgar, his down-to-earth editor and assistant, who strides across the common area of a bright suite of offices in downtown Manhattan, greeting PW and gently insisting that we take her green fleece jacket to swaddle ourselves against the blasting air-conditioned cold of Sacks's own office. Sacks watches from a distance.

Dressed in a green T-shirt and khakis, his 68-year-old body looks robust and powerful, yet the man inhabiting the rugged frame looks as earnest and as excruciatingly vulnerable as Robin Williams's portrayal of him in the movie version of his 1973 book Awakenings, which...