Home > Work > Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
21 " she doesn’t want to begin, she wants to continue. No: she wants to go back. "
― Margaret Atwood , Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
22 " there are some things that do not fare well in high definition. "
23 " Constance did not have a bun. She didn’t need one. She more or less was a bun: neat and contained, and then so tumultuous when unleashed. "
24 " But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be. "
25 " Of late the three of them wouldn’t even let him dry the dishes because he’d dropped too many of them on the floor. He’d done that on purpose, since it was useful to be considered inept when it came to chore division, "
26 " Lighting a fire is an act of renewal, of beginning, and she doesn't want to begin, she wants to continue. No: she wants to go back. "
27 " As his editor put it, “Yeah, it’s a piece of shit, but it’s good shit. "
28 " Why couldn’t the two of them have gone on and on forever? Himself and Constance, sun and moon, each one of them shining, though in different ways. Instead of which he’s here, forsaken by her, abandoned. In time, which fails to sustain him. In space, which fails to cradle him. "
29 " Encyclopedia-selling was known to be the last resort of the feckless, the inept, and the desperate "
30 " She wants to jig and amble, she wants to lisp, she wants to suck the last slurp of essence out of his almost-voided cranium. Avaunt, wanton! "
31 " It's a lifelong failing: she has never been prepared. But how can you have a sense of wonder if you're prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be. "
32 " The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant. Wherever it hits, it crystallizes into a granulated coating of ice. "
33 " She breathes in the cold air; pellets of blown ice whip against her face. The wind’s getting up, as the TV said it would. Nonetheless there’s something brisk about being out in the storm, something energizing: it whisks away the cobwebs, it makes you inhale. "
34 " Sex was a given, like food, and as such was to be relished when excellent and derided when substandard; it was an entertainment, like the theatre, and could thus be reviewed like a performance. "
35 " The hair compromise he finally agreed to is a white strip on the left side – geriatric punk, he’d whispered to himself – with, recently, the addition of an arresting scarlet patch. The total image is that of an alarmed skunk trapped in the floodlights after an encounter with a ketchup bottle. "
36 " At the outset Verna had not intended to kill anyone. "
37 " Guess it’s the climate change,” says Sam. That’s what people say, the way they used to say, We’ve angered God. "
38 " He feels like saying that of course there’s lint on Mr. Wiggly, or dust at any rate, or maybe rust; what does she expect, because as she is well aware Mr. Wiggly has been on the shelf for some time. "
39 " It was only a dream. It was only a larval poem. — "
40 " Even guppies have their opacities. "