I’m sure there will be much debate over whether or not this should be considered “literary”, but this is Deaf Lexy’s closed caption symbol.  She says:

I was born deaf and I got the symbol tattooed because I pretty much learned everything I needed to know in life with the help of closed captions. Plus, it never fails to make people smile.

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“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…”

- From Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

This is Heather’s Twilight tattoo.  Heather is a YA librarian who says that “this line embodies the spirit of all the books”.

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This tattoo is on Aaron, who “regardless of the boy spelling,” is indeed a lady.

The So it Goes tattoo I got after having my beloved cat Jello Biafra put to sleep last year. He was only four. We never really were able to figure out what happened to him, but he gradually lost the use of his front legs, our vet’s best guess was some sort of small tumor on nerve endings. We spent a lot of money and time (driving four hours to see a veterinarian neurologist, taking out a credit card specifically for the vet bills) trying to make him better, but in the end we weren’t able to save him. Some of his ashes were mixed into the ink for this tattoo.

This was posted as a part of “So it Goes” Saturdays.  The phrase “so it goes” appears in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five 116 times.  Can you help me collect 116 “so it goes” tattoos?  10 down, 106 to go.

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Neil’s tattoo is an illustration from The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium by Edward Gorey.

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This tattoo is based on an illustration by John Alcorn in Books! (1962), written by Murray McCain.

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Jennifer submitted her tattoo back in January and I finally got around to posting it:

I just got a great new tattoo while visiting my sister in NM….I had it narrowed down to about ten quotes I liked, and my sister and her husband helped me pick out this one.

“Nothing is worth more than this day” is a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German playwright who’s associated with all sorts of great quotes.

I was really encouraged by all the awesome tattoos posted on this site, though, thanks for posting these here.  Hooray for tattoos!

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“But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing; the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up if you love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky. But believe me- it’s better to look at the sky than to live there. Such an empty place; so vague. just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear…”

- Excerpt from Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

This tattoo is on Coco:

I went alone to the best tattoo place in DC (Jinxproof – I wouldn’t go anywhere else!) to get my pretty painful rib tattoo and it was one of the most exhilarating and empowering experiences of my life. I would definitely recommend going alone to get a personal tattoo– it felt fantastic!

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“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

- William Shakespeare’s As You Like It(Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

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Jim Genzano explains his tattoo:

The tattoo says “Elendil,” the name of a character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, written in Tolkien’s Tengwar script.  In the Elvish language Quenya, the name means “elf friend” or “star lover.” Elendil’s name written in this fashion was often used as his badge and a device on his seals.  I got the tattoo – my first – as a memorial tattoo after the death of my friend Star.  I liked the “star” connection, and also Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings had a huge effect on me growing up and is still my favorite series of novels.  Star was also a fan.

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Just an ever-present reminder of my love, my home, my muse, Illinois. Designed by a good friend.

Byzantium, I come not from,
But from another time and place
Whose race was simple, tried and true;

As boy
I dropped me forth in Illinois.
A name with neither love nor grace
Was Waukegan, there I came from
And not, good friends, Byzantium.

- Excerpt from “Byzantium” by Ray Bradbury

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This tattoo is on Nikki.

This was posted as a part of “So it Goes” Saturdays.  The phrase “so it goes” appears in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five 116 times.  Can you help me collect 116 “so it goes” tattoos?  9 down, 107 to go.

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Look Homeward, Angel is my favorite book of all time and a book in which I consider life-changing- the language and the rich linguistic elegance in which the book was written struck me so, so hard. Before this, I just didn’t know anything could be so beautifully written. Aside from the language, the simple story of Eugene Gant and his family was enchanting. I always considered myself an extremely nature-inspired person, at least on the inside, and I thought ‘hill-haunted’ was a great way to describe that.

“Hill-haunted, whose vision of the earth was mountainwalled, he saw the golden cities sicken in his eye, the opulent dark splendors turn to dingy gray. His brain was sick with the million books, his eyes with the million pictures, his body sickened on a hundred princely wines.”

- Excerpt from Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

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This tattoo was submitted by Julie:

This was my second ever tattoo. It comes from a poem I found in in art book titled ‘The Flights Of Icarus’ when I was a teenager in high school. I used to obsess over the eight poems in the book, reading and rereading them at lunch time.
Years later I hunted down the book and now own an original printing, from 1977.

The poem is by Donald Lehmkuhl and out of all the possible lines, I chose these as they most clearly align with my personal belief system.

ORACLES
The Ultimate Movement.

Knowledge expands perception of the unknown.
*
Self-knowledge reveals the absence of the Self:
The absence of Reality.
The light of form.
The acceleration of Time.
The creation of Space.
The presence of Becoming.
The finiteness of the Universe.
The purpose of suffering.
The pulse of Existence.
The role of Consciousness.
The rule of Consciousness.
*
Consciousness is a phase in Evolution as important as the creation of matter itself.
*
Consciousness is more remarkable than life because without Consciousness life could not be remarked upon.
*
Consciousness is the witness to becoming.
*
Consciousness is the womb of Reality.
*
Consciousness is pain.
*
When we take pains, we take Consciousness.
What we get in exchange for our pains we get in exchange for Consciousness.
*
Consciousness is the limitation to which we are all confined.
We have not the major freedom of the voluptuous innocent panther.
We are not beneath choice, not above it.
*
We have no choice: we have choices.
We are condemned to choose.
*
It is Consciousness that denies us Freedom, yet it is Consciousness that sets us free.
*
Consciousness is the manifestation of thought in matter.
Consciousness is energy’s last leap and greatest leap toward Reality.
*
In the crucible of human suffering, Consciousness is creating god.
*
The Universe is filled with mindscapes: oceans and islands of thought, continents that ripple with canyons and sierras of joy and fear.
*
The mind is studded with stars.
*
The mind is a jar into which space is poured.
*
The Universe is a convoluting brain.
*
The Universe is, therefore it thinks.
*
It thinks me.
*
I am, therefore I am thought.
*
The Universe and I is One.

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(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze, I cannot get out, said the starling).

- Excerpt from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

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Nieninque’s tattoo is from The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.  It is Tolkien’s original illustration of Smaug for the book’s first edition.

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Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold

So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

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This is Jess’s tattoo:

The design is an abstract dandelion. I just thought it exemplified the sentiment perfectly. I got this tattoo about a month after Vonnegut’s death.

This was posted as a part of “So it Goes” Saturdays.  The phrase “so it goes” appears in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five 116 times.  Can you help me collect 116 “so it goes” tattoos?  8 down, 108 to go.

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I can see myself years back at Sunion,
hurting with an inflated foot, Philoctetes
in woman’s form, limping the long path,
lying on a headland over the dark sea,
looking down the red rocks to where a soundless curl
of white told me a wave had struck,
imagining the pull of that water from that height,
knowing deliberate suicide wasn’t my mJtier,
yet all the time nursing, measuring that wound.
Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

- Stanza VIII from Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems” (full text)

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3 lines from the poem “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath:

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.

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Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.

“I feel infinite.”

And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spend, and we felt young in a good way.”

- Excerpt from The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

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