When I met Oliver Sacks in his West Village apartment in New York City in December 2008, it was like being transported back in time. The London-born neurologist and best-selling author graciously offered me a yellow legal pad and a fountain pen from a colorful stash on his writing desk near the 40-year-old typewriter he favored to craft his "neurologic novels." He also handed me a glass of water labeled "Calcium," choosing one labeled "Sodium" for himself, while playing bits of classical music, including Schumann, Bach, and Beethoven, and apologizing for the cacophony of sounds emanating from the steam radiator. He had always loved the periodic table, dedicating an opinion piece in The New York Times to the subject on July 24, 2015, after celebrating his 82nd, and sadly final, birthday, with a nod to element number 82—lead.

I was delighted by his exuberant display of show and tell, punctuated by frequent interruptions as he jumped up to point out various objects in the room: a photo of his record-breaking weightlifting squat, a pile of books on psychiatry. He confessed that he had planned to study mental illness after his brother, who had schizophrenia, had died the year before.

It was clear that he was intrigued by all facets of the human brain, sparking an unprecedented collection of neurologic work, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and other books containing tales of people living with Tourette syndrome, autism, amnesia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and much more. His first published book, Migraine, in 1970, was preceded in 1966 by a lost manuscript on myoclonus—the only copy of which he had handed to an expert on the subject who died soon thereafter, he told me.

As he regaled me with stories, I was struck by his boyish enthusiasm and abundant curiosity, which inspired people with neurologic conditions to send him letters to ask for his help. He told me, "It's a great privilege and a great responsibility ... to be given people's stories," reminding me to write about people with "respect, tact, and delicacy so they will not feel their privacy has been violated."

On that memorable afternoon I was interviewing Dr. Sacks for Neurology Today (he was also featured in a cover story in Neurology Now), but at the time I had also been writing my own patient stories for Neurology Now for three years, and I took his words to heart. It continues to be both a great privilege and a great responsibility to hear stories from you, our readers, and to present them in our publication so that others may learn from your experience and wisdom.

"When people die, they cannot be replaced," Sacks wrote in another column in The New York Times. "They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death." At the time of his death—just days ago as I write this letter—multitudes of neurologists like me, whose careers he helped to inspire and shape, as well as readers across the globe, feel the enormity of this loss.

Orly Avitzur, MD, MBA, FAAN

Editor-in-Chief