This is April Steele’s tattoo:

The story goes that this phrase was shouted at young Ray Bradbury by a magician named Mr. Electrico at a carnival in 1932. Each night at the end of his show this magician would be “electrocuted” in front of the crowd and, using a sword, would knight all the children on the front row. In his own words: “When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, ‘Live forever!’ I thought that was a wonderful idea, but how did you do it?”

It is difficult to do the rest of the story any justice–it gets so much better–so I urge anyone to go read it here. He claims that he started writing a few days later and has written every day of his life since.

I wanted a Bradbury tattoo for a long time but could never find the one image that I felt encompassed all the energy, wonder, and nostalgia of his work. When I read those two words for the first time it was like they were electric. They gave me goosebumps. To me, it encompassed both the individual desire to make some kind of permanent mark on the world as well as the universal imperative to always push forward. Whatever the thing is that drives humankind to keep experimenting, keep creating, keep going further into space (for better or for worse), is what Bradbury’s work has always meant to me. All of it was wrapped in this amazing two-word command. Plus, I think it would be pretty incredible to literally live forever, or at least long enough to see the end of the world!

Tattoo by Vanessa Waites at Underground Art in Memphis, TN.
Photo by Joey Miller of Memphis, TN.”

(49 votes, average: 4.47 out of 5)

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This is Anna’s tattoo:

It’s basically a reminder to live life and to experience it and spend time with those I love, and to spend time doing what I love.

“Hershel did not possess a family of his own. He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid.”

- Excerpt from Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

(59 votes, average: 4.39 out of 5)

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Happy Family Day to certain Canadians.  This is Emily’s tattoo.

“I decided that I wanted to make a very clear statement about my love and dedication to my family…specifically my mother, my father and my brother. For the first 25 years of my life it was just the four of us and this tattoo is a tribute to that very special time.”

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.”

- Anthony Brandt

(31 votes, average: 3.03 out of 5)

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This is Sarah’s tattoo:

I fell in love with Ulysses by James Joyce when I was in college studying literature, identifying with the bumbling, conflicted Leopold Bloom.

When my life was recently turned upside down by heartache, I was reminded of this line from the “Hades” chapter, spoken by Bloom: “Plenty to see and hear and feel yet.”

I modified the line to bring out the main points, and had it done in white ink on the inside of my wrist. Most artists don’t like to do white ink tattoos, but I wanted this tattoo to be for me and not immediately visible to anyone else. It’s my daily reminder that no matter what unexpected turns that life can take, there’s always something new around the corner.

(77 votes, average: 4.56 out of 5)

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This is Nick’s tattoo:

Attached is a photograph of my own V.F.D. tattoo, located on the inside of my left ankle, from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s different from most you’ll see in that it’s based on Bret Helquist’s drawing in the ninth book, The Carnivorous Carnival (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 9). I chose this design over the other one because it was more obviously an eye, and less obviously the letters V.F.D.

(32 votes, average: 3.69 out of 5)

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This is Ren’s tattoo.

Any new idea, Mahound, is asked two questions.
The first is asked when it’s weak:
WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?
Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive;
or are you the cursed, bloody-minded ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze?
- the kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits;
but the hundredth time, will change the world?

What’s the second question? Gibreel asked.

Answer the first one first.

- The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

(28 votes, average: 4.21 out of 5)

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This is Katie C.’s tattoo:

The reason I got it was because I can really relate to having many paths in my life I might take, and I want to remind myself that if I wait around for the perfect, right one, eventually all my choices will be gone.

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7

(46 votes, average: 4.13 out of 5)

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This is Emily’s tattoo of the Ancient Greek aphorism “Know Thyself” (nosce te ipsum):

It means that to know and understand yourself if to be able to understand others. It also can be very literal in that it is just important to know who you are inside and out. I learned about this in my political philosophy class in college… I read Plato’s Republic and my professor gave a lecture on the quote “know thyself” and I loved it!

(31 votes, average: 3.03 out of 5)

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This is Sammuel’s tattoo:

i love the poem – the sentiment (ie- the contradiction that is love or that is ecstatic love).  the voice here can only be chaste when ravished.  and what does it mean to be ravished by god?  this picture was taken the night i had it done.

- Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God (Holy Sonnet XIV) by John Donne

(30 votes, average: 3.57 out of 5)

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This is Chelsea’s tattoo.

“Written down here, gentle reader
It seems too good to be true
But there’s a girl in Kansas City
With my favourite tattoo
Oh why would I lie to you?
This was in another century
Somewhere near the summer’s end
The fahrenheit was frightening
I was awake the whole weekend
Invited to a barbecue
I found refuge in the kitchen
Discussing post-war US literature
With a girl whose upper arm read “fiction”
Like it might have been typewritten
I asked her its significance
She said she sometimes took reminding
What she wanted to be doing
Whether reading it or writing”

- “Fiction” by The Lucksmiths

(53 votes, average: 4.23 out of 5)

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