Bags Topics

Why should a blacksmith put his hands in the fire if he has tongs?
She was paradigmatic of those fat, gigantic women in London, all bum and elbow, who wear itchy tentlike coats, carry absurd bags of oranges, and usually wheeze down beside you on the bus, smelling of shilling perfume and cold air. She wore “sensible” shoes, had one bad foot, smoked too much, and cultivated a look as if she were always about to say no. In all, she was a woman with the carriage and studied irascibility of a middle-aged prebendary in the Church of England, executrix of self-reliance, lawgiver, Diocletian reborn.
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)

I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)

Some dead undid their bushy jaws,
And bags of blood let out their flies;
He had by heart the Christ-cross-row of death.
Sleep navigates the tides of time;
The dry Sargasso of the tomb
Gives up its dead to such a working sea....
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)