62
" electrical wires dragged down by the weight of the ice and flickering balefully, a row of sleet-covered planes stranded in an airport, a huge truck that’s jackknifed and tipped over and is lying on its side with smoke coming out. An ambulance is on the scene, a fire truck, a huddle of raingear-clad operatives: someone’s been injured, always a sight to make the heart beat faster. A policeman appears, crystals of ice whitening his moustache; he pleads sternly with people to stay inside. It’s no joke, he tells the viewers. Don’t think you can brave the elements! His frowning, frosted eyebrows are noble, like those on the wartime bond-drive posters from the 1940s. Constance remembers those, or believes she does. But she may just be remembering history books or museum displays or documentary films: so hard, sometimes, to tag those memories accurately. Finally, a minor touch of pathos: a stray dog is displayed, semi-frozen, wrapped in a child’s pink nap blanket. A gelid baby "
― Margaret Atwood , Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
76
" Things are getting out of hand: Tony finds herself channeling this opinion at least once a day. The crazed weather. The vicious, hate-filled politics. The myriad glass high-rises going up like 3-D mirrors, or siege engines. The municipal garbage collection: Who can keep all those different-coloured bins straight? Where to put the clear plastic food containers, and why isn't the little number on the bottom a reliable guide?
And the vampires. You used to know where you stood with them--smelly, evil,undead--but now there are virtuous vampires and disreputable vampires, and sexy vampires and glittery vampires, and none of the old rules about them are true any more. Once you could depend on garlic, and on the rising sun, and on crucifixes. You could get rid of the vampires once and for all. But not any more. "
― Margaret Atwood , Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
77
" The Dead Hand, yeah, it was, like, seminal, but tame by today’s standards. Violet, for instance, did not get her intestines ripped out. There wasn’t any torture, nobody’s liver got fried in a pan, there wasn’t any gang rape. So what’s the fun of that? "
― Margaret Atwood , Stone Mattress: Nine Tales