From the Bookshelf of Lambda Sci-Fi…

Upon closer examination the principal themes and motifs of literature and popular culture are nine in number . . . blindness as compensatory or miraculous power, blindness as total tragedy; blindness as foolishness and helplessness; blindness as unrelieved

Upon closer examination the principal themes and motifs of literature and popular culture are nine in number . . . blindness as compensatory or miraculous power, blindness as total tragedy; blindness as foolishness and helplessness; blindness as unrelieved wickedness and evil; blindness as perfect virtue; blindness as punishment for sin; blindness as abnormality or dehumanization; blindness as purification; and blindness as symbol or parable.

The havoc wrought upon the lives of blind people in ages past by these literary traditions is done, and it cannot be undone; but the future is yet to be determined.

it was not the same as before, when blind people could always count on the assistance of some passerby, whether to cross the street, or to get back on to the right path in the base of having inadvertently strayed from the usual route.

The worst thing is that whole families, especially the smaller ones, rapidly became families of blind people, leaving no one who could guide and look after them nor protect sighted neighbors from them, and it was clear that these blind people, how caring a father, mother or child they might be, could not take care of each other.

She could not even bear to think of the consequences that would ensure if it were to be discovered that she was not blind, at the very least she would find herself at the beck and call of everyone, at worst, she might become the slave of some of them.

Think of the consequences, they will almost certainly try to turn you into their slave, a general dogsbody, you will be at the beck and call of everyone, they will expect you to feed them, wash them, put them to bed and get them up in the morning and have you take them from here to there, blow their nose and dry their tears, they will call out for you when you are asleep, insult you if you keep them waiting.

Let's be glad of our good fortune at still having a pair of seeing eyes with us here, the last pair left, if they are extinguished one day, I don't even want to think about it, then the thread which links us to that human mankind would be broken. It will be as if we were to separate from each other in space, forever.

The soldiers would have liked to aim their weapons and, without compunction, shoot down those imbeciles moving before their eyes like lame crabs, waving their unsteady pincers in search of their missing leg.

It was too funny for words, some of the blind on their knees advancing on all fours, their faces practically touching the ground as if they were pigs.

In the busier places, so long as it is not completely open, like the yard, the blind no longer lose their way, with one arm held out in front and several fingers moving like the antennae of insects.

We shall no longer know who we are, or even remember our names, and besides, what use would names be to us, no dog recognizes another dog or knows the others by the names they have been given, a dog is identified by its scent and that is how it identifies others, here we are like another breed of dogs, we know each other's bark or speech, as for the rest, features, colour of eyes or hair, they are of no importance, it is as if they did not exist.

the feelings with which we have lived and which allowed us to live as we were, depended on our having the eyes we were born with . . . the sense of responsibility is the natural consequence of clear vision

I love you enough to want to be with you, and that is the first time I've ever said that to anyone, You would not have said it to me either if you had met me somewhere before, an elderly man, half bald with white hair, with a patch over one eye and a cataract in the other, The woman I was then wouldn't have said it, I agree, the person who said it was the woman I am today.