Tupac Shakur - Christopher Hitchens - The Young Savages 1961 - Money Train 1995 - William Shakespeare - Helen Keller - Thomas Hardy - Blaise Pascal - Martin Luther - Ray Charles - Erasmus - Samuel Pepys - Matthew 15:14 - John 9:25 - Jane Austen - James Joyce - John Milton - Game of Thrones TV - Derren Brown TV - Storyville: Notes on Blindness TV - Dealt 2017 -
In my mind I’m a blind man doin’ time. Tupac Shakur
If Jesus could heal a blind person he happened to meet, then why not heal blindness? Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p3
The boys admit the killing but they claim self-defence. However the boy they killed – the Puerto Rican boy – was blind. The Young Savages 1961 starring Burt Lancaster & Dina Merrill & Edward Andrews & Vivian Nathan & Shelley Winters & Larry Gates & Telly Savalas & Roberta Shore & Milton Selzer et al, director John Frankenheimer
Frank, do you happen to know why blind people don’t skydive? Well I’ll tell you; it’s because it scares the shit out of the dogs. Money Train 1995 starring Wesley Snipes & Woody Harrelson & Jennifer Lopez & Robert Blake & Chris Cooper & Joe Grifasi & Scott Sowers & Skipp Sudduth et al, director Joseph Ruben, Harrelson
He that is striken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet I i 229-230, Romeo to Benvolio
My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence. And behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness. Helen Keller
There is a condition worse than blindness – and that is seeing something that isn’t there. Thomas Hardy
If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are. Blaise Pascal
Their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain. Martin Luther
If you want to do something, you can make yourself about as independent as you want to be. You have to have the will. It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re blind or not. I’ve known some people who have all five senses, and they’re pretty pathetic to me. Ray Charles
In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Erasmus 1469-1536, Adages
And so I betake myself in that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave – for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me! Samuel Pepys, diary 31st May 1669
Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Matthew 15:14
Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
What dreams would he have, not seeing. Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? James Joyce, Ulysses
To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable. John Milton
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! John Milton, Samson Agonistes
Thousands of books and no eyes to read them! Old age is a wonderful source of irony if nothing else. Game of Thrones: The Watchers on the Wall s4e9, blind bloke of King’s watch
One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. John 9:25
Amongst their most intriguing claims is that they can teach the blind to see. Derren Brown Investigates: The Men With X Ray Eyes, 2010
In the early 1980s theologian John Hull lost his sight. He began keeping an audio diary. Storyville: Notes on Blindness, BBC 2017
I would see a flicker of a shadow across the window as you moved across it. ibid.
I had a tape recorder of course. I had cassettes. ibid.
A team of people to record books for me … It became an absolute business … hundreds of cassettes. Hundreds! ibid.
I had to think about blindness. Because if I didn’t understand it, it would defeat me. ibid.
After nearly three years of blindness I find that the pictures in the gallery of my mind have dimmed somewhat. ibid.
I am concerned to understand blindness. To seek its meaning. To retain the fullness of my humanity. ibid.
I would like to know what happens to that part of the brain when optic stimulation ceases; could this perhaps account for the sense of suffering? ibid.
A note on the experience of hearing rain falling … Rain brings out the contours of what’s around you in that it introduces a blanket of differentiated and specialised sound which fills the whole of the audible environment. ibid.
Not why have I got it but what am I going to do with it. ibid.
In 1990 John’s audio diaries were transcribed and published under the title Touching the Rock. ibid.
I’m a car mechanic. Dealt, Richard Turner, 2017
I represent why you should never play cards with strangers. ibid.
It hits them out of the blue: he’s blind. ibid. fellow magician
I thought Maverick was so cool. ibid. Turner
I didn’t have to see what I was doing; I could feel what I was doing. ibid.
My dad is a little bit on the crazy side. ibid. son
He never puts the cards down. ibid. fellow magician