This is Miss B’s tattoo, inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

B says the tattoo was done by Edgar Sick Clown at Old London Road Studios in Kingston Upon Thames, London.

(66 votes, average: 4.21 out of 5)

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This is Kat’s tattoo:

It says “Defy Gravity” and is from the play Wicked. I actually just saw the show for the first time recently, but I fell in love with it instantly. The showstopping number “Defying Gravity” was not only a highlight of the play for me, but its message of empowerment really spoke to me. I wanted the tattoo from the moment the show let out, as a reminder to just go for it in life and not let anyone or anything hold me down :)

Wicked (songs and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman) is based on Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire.

(42 votes, average: 2.38 out of 5)

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This tattoo belongs to AF and references the opening paragraph of Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, the first volume of The Deptford Trilogy.

“My lifelong involvement with Mrs. Dempster began at 5:58 o’clock p.m. on the 27th of December, 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.”

(33 votes, average: 2.30 out of 5)

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This is Stellar’s tattoo:

there are so many parts of this poem that resonate with me, however I chose the first line because it reminds me to stay fluid. If there is one thing I can be sure of it’s that everything is constantly transforming.

Be ahead of all departure, as if it were already
behind you, like the winter which is almost over.
For among winters there is one so endlessly winter,
that, wintering through it, may your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice—, singing ascent,
praising ascent, returning to pure relation.
Here, among the disappearing, be, in the realm
of decline, be the ringing glass that shatters even as it sounds.

Be—and yet know Not-being’s condition,
the infinite ground of your innermost movement,
that you may bring it to completion but this one time.

To that which is used-up, as to nature’s abundant
dumb and mute supply, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself and the result destroy.

- Excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus XIII by Rainer Maria Rilke

(42 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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This is Joe Nickerson’s tattoo.

“And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.”

- From Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Joe says:

The brilliant shadow the writer David Foster Wallace cast over my life and writing and the way I view the world is really pretty much impossible to quantify. Aside from family members, I have never felt such sorrow related to the death of a person I did not personally know – though, that is not entirely accurate. Given the depth of emotion and human decency David often shared and expressed in both his fiction and essays, and the extent to which I often live in my own head, on some level, I had (still have) a deeper, more intimate relationship with him than I had or have with friends and/or family – both living and deceased.

So, as someone who has always been interested in literary-minded tattoos, this was a no brainer. The passage is taken from his beautiful mess of novel, Infinite Jest – the ellipses, a device Wallace often employed to express a character’s speechlessness, symbolizes my own inability to fully express both my own sorrow and David’s fall into silence.

(36 votes, average: 4.22 out of 5)

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This is Michelle’s tattoo:

My tattoo is from Donna Tartt’s book The Secret History, and is a quote/paraphrase from Book 11 of The Iliad: “Be strong saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.” I’ve been having some rough times in my life, so this is a reminder to be strong, and that I’ve gone through tough times before, and I can get through these ones and come out better for it in the end.

(48 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

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This is Brenda’s Harry Potter tattoo:

For the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the bookseller where I bought my copy handed out some gifts. Among these were some Bertie Bott’s, HP-style glasses, and a lightning bolt temporary tattoo. I carried this little stick-on tattoo for several years in my wallets, bags, etc until one day I just decided to get it tattooed on my shoulder as a tribute to the book series and its characters with whom I’ve grown up.

(60 votes, average: 2.18 out of 5)

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“If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!”

- Invitation by Shel Silverstein

This is Kaitlynn’s tattoo:

I got it in memory of all of my grandparents who have passed away, mainly for my mom’s mom, who loved Shel Silverstein’s work and collected his books – “Invitation” was one of her favorite poems.

(104 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)

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This tattoo belongs to Mirabai Knight:

This is my Latin palindrome tattoo. It’s not from any specific literary work; it’s actually a piece of graffiti dating back at least 2,000 years. It’s been found inscribed on walls and stones in cities all over Europe, from Herculaneum to Manchester. It literally translates to “The sower Arepo holds the wheels at work”, and might have its origins in the worship of Mithras, Persian god of the sun, though not much is conclusively known. It’s the only sentence in any language that can be arranged in a grid to read identically in four different directions.

You can read more about the Sator Square on Wikipedia.

(78 votes, average: 4.46 out of 5)

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It’s Saturday, and since you’ve all established exactly how much you enjoy So it Goes Saturdays, I’m going to take a break from that and post something a little different.  This dedicated fan has 9 tattoos from various Vonnegut works.

This post is image-heavy!

» Read more after the jump →

(20 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)

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