Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

- 1 Corinthians 13

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“So it goes.”

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

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“If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.”

- Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

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This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- Hamlet, Act I, sc. iii

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“Wherever love is, I want to be, I will follow it as surely as the land-locked salmon finds the sea.”

- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

The tattoo’s owner says:

“Love is something about which I have spent a long time musing and thinking. Why else would we be here, other than love? I get a lot of comments on this tattoo. The sentiment really fits me, because love is my guiding force.”

(read more)

I count to three and grin. You smile and let me in. We sit and watch the wall you painted purple. Speech will spill on space. Our little cups of grace. But pauses rattle on about the way that you cut the snow-fence, braved the blood, the metal of those hearts that you always end up pressing your tongue to. How your body still remembers things you told it to forget. How those furious affections followed you. I’ve got this store-bought way of saying I’m okay, and you learned how to cry in total silence. We’re talented and bright. We’re lonely and uptight. We’ve found some lovely ways to disappoint, but the airport’s almost empty this time of the year, so let’s go play on a baggage carousel. Set our watches forward like we’re just arriving here from a past we left in a place we knew too well. (Hold on to the corners of today, and we’ll fold it up to save until it’s needed. Stand still. Let me scrub that brackish line that you got when something rose and then receded.

- Watermark by The Weatherthans (from the album Left and Leaving)

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Text from Neuromancer by William Gibson.

See more pictures here.

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“And the tree was happy.”

- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

“Give me life / wherever there is opportunity / to live”

- From Oedipus the King by Sophocles

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Why do your eyes paralyze me?
What makes me feel this way?
Carry me away with silence and heartbeats as rapid
Thinking about your embrace
And how it makes me feel
I just want to feel this way forever
Sleep on portraits painted as perfect as you
Why have I been given the chance to fly
When I’m not with you I feel lesser alone
Why have I been given the chance to fly, away?
I remember your face imprinted on angels
Your voice as beautiful as the sounds of waves
Crashing against my heart
Time slows down when you look at me
I’m infatuated with this / infatuated with you
I remember your face imprinted on angels
It’s so hard for me to understand
Why I hadn’t found you before
Don’t dull away,
Hold my hand

- Poison the Well, Nerdy

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Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I’m with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I’m with you in Rockland
where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries
I’m with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I’m with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter

- Excerpt from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (full text)

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“Be my life.”

- From RENT

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