" What are you afraid of then?'
She pondered. He had already noticed that it was her hands which indicated what she was thinking of quite as much as her face and now he watched as she cupped them, making them ready to receive her thoughts.
'Not being able to see, I think,' she said.
'Being blind, you mean?'
'No, not that. That would be terrible hard but Homer managed it and our blind piano tuner is one of the serenest people I know. I mean ... not seeing because you're obsessed by something that blots out the world. Some sort of mania of belief. Or passion. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it's not the face on some man. "

― Eva Ibbotson , A Song for Summer