Random Oliver Sacks Nugget

Second volume of posthumous Oliver Sacks, Everything in It's Place: First Loves and Last Tales, reviewed at NY Review of Books.

His childhood nickname was “Inky”; he started writing in journals from his teens and never stopped. He wrote in cafés, in bars, on his bike, even at concerts. He almost never read the journals; they were sketchpads he used to work out his themes, to find his form, to articulate his story. 

"To find his mind" might have been just as fitting.