Research interests make shy Sacks chatty

I am shy in ordinary social contexts: I am not able to "chat" with any ease; I have difficulty recognizing people . . .; I have little knowledge of and little interest in current affairs, whether political, social, or sexual. . . . Given all this, I tend to retreat into a corner . . . . But if I find someone, at a party or elsewhere, who shares some of my own (usually scientific) interests—volcanoes, jellyfish, gravitational waves, whatever—then I am immediately drawn into animated conversation (though I may still fail to recognize the person I am talking to a moment later).

Oliver Sacks, On the Move: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)