Cathedral by Ramond Carver

"She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her." --210

"I don't have any blind friends," I said.
"You don't have any friends," she said.--212

"They'd married, lived and worked together, slept together--had sex, sure--and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like." --213

"I feel like we've already met," he boomed --214

"I remembered having read somewhere that the blind didn't smoke because, as speculation had it, they couldn't see the smoke they exhaled." --217

"For the most part, I just listened. Now and then I joined in. I didn't want him to think I'd left the room, and I didn't want her to think I was feeling left out." --218

The blind man said, "My dear, I have two TVs... --218

"Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep." --222

"...I know generations of the same families worked on a cathedral. I heard him say that, too. The men who began their life's work on the them, they never lived to see the completion of their work. In that wise, bub, they're no different from the rest of us, right?" --224

"In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God." --225

"He closed his hand over my hand. "Go ahead, bub, draw," he said, "Draw. You'll see. I'll follow along with you. It'll be okay... --227

"It's all right," he said to her. "Close your eyes now," the blind man said to me. --228

"Take a look. What do you think?"
But I had my eye closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. --228