My American Gods tattoo was submitted and posted a few months ago and then this happened - I met Neil Gaiman, the author of the words I chose to have permanently inked on my body and showed him my tattoo. Despite the fact that this must happen to them often, he and his wife - the musician/artist/awesome Amanda Palmer - were so excited that this photo was taken and tweeted by Amanda. That Neil’s face next to his words.

“When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bisects both your ears, making eyes very alert. The light bends toward chalky blue. Your skin aches. At last: something real.” (emphasis mine)

ink by Sean Rains, Anchors End Tattoo - Playa Jaco (Costa Rica)
quotation from Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

palequeenliteraryquotes:

“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.”

 

 

 

 

-Mark Twain

“…Time yet for a hundred indecisions, and a hundred visions and revisions…” 

Excerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. 

Done by Jay at Lark Tattoo in Westbury, NY. 

From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

My first tattoo, as a reminder to keep my head up even when shit happens. 

One of my new tattoos. It’s from the Dark Tower books by Stephen King.

It is an old Gunslinger saying:

First come the smiles
Then comes lies
Last is gunfire

A quotation from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. 

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me

palequeenliteraryquotes:

“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”

 -Marcel Proust

LORD POLONIUS: I’ll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.
LORD POLONIUS: What is the matter, my lord?
HAMLET: Between who?
LORD POLONIUS: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
HAMLET: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet. 

Jesse, my tattooist, says that it’s funny I got this tattoo. He says a lot of clients walk in to the shop and tell him they want a quote, but they have no idea which one so they get on the shop computer and search for love quotes or life quotes or whatever and just pick whichever one they like the best. Jesse also mentioned that it seems like everyone who comes in gets lettering. 

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well then… I contradict myself;

I am large… I contain multitudes.”

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Quote by Albert Camus. Tattooed at Way of Ink in Springfield, VA.

“On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.” Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Translation: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

This is a quote of my favourite book and it means the only way we truly see is with our hearts.

This is my Little Prince tattoo! I know what I think it is. What do you see? ~*

This is my first tattoo, a replica of “le Renard” (the fox) from one of my favorite books Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). I have read the book in both English and French countless times. It has held a lot of meaning to me since childhood, and the fox in particular has some very memorable lines:

Les hommes ont oublié cette vérité, dit le renard. Mais tu ne dois pas l’oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

The tattoo is my way of carrying with me forever all those who I have “tamed.”