Ink Tattoo Quotes

Tattoos, for example, are very hard to forget. I think there's something about the impermanence of life these days that makes it necessary to etch ink into our skins. It reminds us that we've been marked by the world, that we're still alive. That we'll never forget.

Some hurts can never be mended" he said. "No matter how much time passes. They tattoo themselves on our souls

Our bodies were printed as blank pages to be filled with the ink of our hearts

Once upon a different time, there was a girl who lived in a kingdom of death. Wolves howled up her arm. A whole pack of them--made of tattoo ink and pain, memory and loss. It was the only thing about her that ever stayed the same.

Then Rhys fell to his knees and took Nesta's hands in his, pressing his mouth to her fingers. "Thank you," he wept, head bowed. Cassian knew it wasn't in gratitude for Rhy's own life that he knelt upon the sacred tattoos inked upon his knees. Nesta dropped to the carpet. Lifted Rhy's face in her hands, studied what lay in it. Then she threw her arms around the High Lord of the Night Court and held him tightly.

Cordelia had thought a tattoo would be rather more like their Marks, but it reminded her of something else instead. It was ink, the way books and poems were made of ink, telling a permanent story.

I think i should get love inked on my skin. Maybe that's the only way i am destined to keep it.

Adam was in the dream, too; he traced the tangled pattern of ink with his finger. He said, "Scio quid hoc est." As he traced it further and further down on the bare skin of Ronan's back, Ronan himself disappeared entirely, and the tattoo got smaller and smaller. It was a Celtic knot the size of a wafer, and then Adam, who had become Kavinsky, said "Scio quid estis vos." He put the tattoo in his mouth and swallowed it. Ronan woke with a start, ashamed and euphoric. The euphoria wore off long before the shame did. He was never sleeping again.

What have you done to me?" Rhysand stood, running a hand through his short, dark hair. It's custom in my court for bargains to be permanently marked upon flesh." I rubbed my left forearm and hand, the entirety of which was now covered in swirls and whorls of black ink. Even my fingers weren't spared, and a large eye was tattooed in the center of my palm. It was feline, and its slitted pupil stared right back me. "Make it go away," I said, and he laughed. "You humans are truly grateful creatures, aren't you?

She wouldn’t want to be caught on his bad side—assuming he had a good side—yet the naughty bad boy vibes were like an undercurrent pulling her in. Don’t-mess-with-me meets I-dare-you-to-resist.

Sometimes you have to go a little crazy before you can find sanity. I think I'm close.

Maybe that's what I needed. Another tattoo. Some pain on the outside to ease the pain on the inside.

She wanted something she didn't have words for- peace, numbness, something.

Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them. Tattoos, for example, are very hard to forget. I think there's something about the impermanence of life these days that makes it necessary to etch ink into our skin. It reminds us that we've been marked by the world, that we're still alive. That we'll never forget.

A few months ago, she’d gotten a tattoo, a single word inked from wrist bone to wrist bone, just under the heel of her hand. SURVIVOR.

It wasn't the tattoo that had changed her, had given her repossession of her body. It was her actions, her choices. It was finding the path when it looked like there weren't any paths to be found.

I had a tattoo once,” said Kaidan. “Last year, just before we left England.” “What do you mean, you had one 'once'?” “Bloody thing was gone by the morning!” His voice was indignant. “Sheets were black with ink. I put myself through all of that for hours, and my body just pushed it back out!” And once again we were both in a fit of hysterics, sharing the world's best inside joke. We were doubled over, unable to breathe, and I accidentally snorted. Kaidan pointed at me and laughed harder, clutching his stomach. “What was your tattoo?” I managed to push the words out. “You had to ask. It was a deadly-looking pair of black wings on my shoulder blades.” Kaidan and I started roaring again, muscles clenching from the exertion. We had no way of knowing it would be our last reason to laugh for a very long time.

If you guys want to get a MOM tattoo and save a little money, just get two letters done. Get about a one-inch capital M tattooed on each cheek of your ass in pink and brown ink. Then when you bend over, it says "Mom." Also, later on if you're havin' sex with your girlfriend, and her parents are in the next room, when you finish up you can just lie on your back, draw your legs up to your chest and silently say, 'Wow!

Tattoos are a permanent commitment of passion

Brahma and Airavata Long ago in lands of golden sand Brahma turned to Saraswati and gently kissed her inked hand....

If all of our sins, bad habits, and poor choices were permanently inked into our skin like tattoos, we would all dress quite modestly.

The ink of a pen is simply the blood of a heart

<…>….That's how he made his living. He gave me a pen and ink. This," he lifted his left arm then dropped it back to the bed. "After he died, I had it inked on me. Took what he gave me to a tattoo parlor right after the funeral and got it started." Her voice held a tone of light dawning as she whispered, "So he was your Ella." Her light dawned clear for her and for Walker because she was right. "Yeah, he was my Ella." "So it was Tuku who brought out my Ty." My Ty. My Ty. Christ. Fuck. Christ. Two words. Just two words. Walker had no clue until that moment that two words could mean so fucking much. He'd never belonged to anyone. He'd never belonged anywhere. Never thought he wanted to. Until he heard those two words. He couldn't keep the thick out of his voice when he confirmed, "Yeah, it was him."<…>

His fingers painted my skin with ruby red patterns of desire. In Keahi’s kiss I could taste the red burn of chili encrusted in the rich sweetness of melted chocolate. I breathed in his scent and it spoke to me of vanilla. The ink of my malu tattoo began to burn, searing markings of fiery joy.

I'll become someone new. Through blood and pain and ink, I can be remade.

Across the moon-pale scar that marred my forearm, Darian danced in dark ink, the gracefully curving edges of his name unravelling into a spill of colour as joyful and haphazard as the promise of stars.

Two hallmarks of Homo Sapiens are decoration and self-identification.

Jake, if you could stand the idea of getting inked, you'd have a pink triangle tattooed across your chest.

My tattoos, like most people's, were reminders, badges of personal experiences. Yes, I might wear them on my skin for the world to see, but their meaning was a little too personal.

You can’t miss your schedule. Every morning, you’re supposed to stick your right arm in this contraption in the wall. It tattoos the smooth inside of your forearm with your schedule for the day in a sickly purple ink. 7:00—Breakfast. 7:30—Kitchen Duties. 8:30—Education Center, Room 17. And so on. The ink is indelible until 22:00—Bathing

I shook my head. "Not Interested" I said. he straightened up. "Not interested in what?" In you." I couldn't be more blunt. Excuse me, miss, but I was going to ask if you would like to sign up for karaoke.

Tramp stamp. A tattoo in the center of a woman's lower back. Also referred to as a "California bumper sticker." The germans refer to this as "arschgeweih," which translates as "ass antler." Bravo!

The extra clutter adds no important insight; instead, it offers more clutter in which erros can lurk.

Do you want to stick needles in the living or scalpels in the dead?

Getting ink felt right, like it would help her put her life in order, to move forwards. It was her body, despite the things that'd been done to it, and she wanted to claim it, to own it, to prove that to herself. She knew it wasn't magic, but the idea of writing her own identity felt like the closest she could get to reclaiming her life. Sometimes there's power in the act; sometimes there's strength in words. She wanted to find an image that represented those things she was feeling, to etch it on her skin as tangible proof of her decision to change.

And don’t miss Frank Otto, the world’s most tattooed man! Held hostage in the darkest jungles of Borneo and tried for a crime he didn’t commit, and his punishment? Well, folks, his punishment is written all over his body in permanent ink!

It hurts, right? It's messy and complicated and it's like a tattoo that never ends. A million needles inking something on your heart that isn't even beautiful." "The feeling you have in that moment right as you wake up, before your brain mucks it all up with thoughts and words? That very first feeling is where the truth lives." "Because love always wins. Always.

Just ink,’ he says. 'Just ink.’ Probably the most dangerous substance on this here earth. There’ve been wars started by 'just ink.

Then Rhys fell to his knees and took Nesta's hands in his, pressing his mouth to her fingers. 'Thank you,' he wept, head bowed. Cassian knew it wasn't in gratitude for Rhys's own life that he knelt upon the sacred tattoos inked upon his knees. Nesta dropped to the carpet. Lifted Rhys's face in her hands, studied what lay in it. Then she threw her arms around the High Lord of the Night Court and held him tightly.

I'm also getting a piece of chocolate cake... "Can I have a bite?" he asked, his voice smooth and sexy. A bite of what? she wanted to ask, but didn't. She wasn't ready for that level of flirting. "Get your own slice, Gallagher." "I can do that, Blake. I'm in the mood for something sweet it seems.

She gritted her teeth as his needle pierced along her spine. “I’m glad you’re here—that I’ll see Endovier again for the first time with you here.” To face that part of her past, that suffering and torment, if she couldn’t yet look too closely at the last several months. His tools, the numbing pain, halted. Then his lips brushed the top of her spine, right above the start of the new tattoo. The same tattoo he’d had Gavriel and Fenrys inking on his own back these past few days, whenever they stopped for the night. “I’m glad to be here, too, Fireheart.” For however much longer the gods would allow it.

The night following the reading, Gansey woke up to a completely unfamiliar sound and fumbled for his glasses. It sounded a little like one of his roommates was being killed by a possum, or possibly the final moments of a fatal cat fight. He wasn’t certain of the specifics, but he was sure death was involved. Noah stood in the doorway to his room, his face pathetic and long-suffering. “Make it stop,” he said. Ronan’s room was sacred, and yet here Gansey was, twice in the same weak, pushing the door open. He found the lamp on and Ronan hunched on the bed, wearing only boxers. Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers, was a beak where before he’d seen a scythe. The ragged sound cut through the apartment again. “What fresh hell is this?” Gansey asked pleasantly. Ronan was wearing headphones as usual, so Gansey stretched forward far enough to tug them down around his neck. Music wailed faintly into the air. Ronan lifted his head. As he did, the wicked flowers on his back shifted and hid behind his sharp shoulder blades. In his lap was the half-formed raven, its head tilted back, beak agape. “I thought we were clear on what a closed door meant,” Ronan said. He held a pair of tweezers in one hand. “I thought we were clear that night was for sleeping.” Ronan shrugged. “Perhaps for you.” “Not tonight. Your pterodactyl woke me. Why is it making that sound?” In response, Ronan dipped the tweezers into a plastic baggy on the blanket in front of him. Gansey wasn’t certain he wanted to know what the gray substance was in the tweezers’ grasp. As soon as the raven heard the rustle of the bag, it made the ghastly sound again—a rasping squeal that became a gurgle as it slurped down the offering. At once, it inspired both Gansey’s compassion and his gag reflex. “Well, this is not going to do,” he said. “You’re going to have to make it stop.” “She has to be fed,” Ronan replied. The ravel gargled down another bite. This time it sounded a lot like vacuuming potato salad. “It’s only every two hours for the first six weeks.” “Can’t you keep her downstairs?” In reply, Ronan half-lifted the little bird toward him. “You tell me.

stories we all are stories, we are books longing for someone to look beyond our covers, and turn our pages and read the ink tattooed on them. we long to be seen, we want to be read and understood and loved, we are hoping to become poetry to those hearts that see us, something beautiful and unforgettable.

The candles illuminated the room and his murals of tattoos...There were muscles everywhere, protruding from his skin and framing him like armor; his body was long and wide, full of valleys, deep creases and ink. He looked like a deviant. A beautiful, dangerous deviant.

He wrapped her hair around his fist, tilted her head back, and kissed her. Hard. She moaned into him, and he pulled away. "Possessive much?" she asked on a laugh. "Just making sure these hooligans know you're mine." Her brow rose. "Really? Yours? Talk about caveman." "I'm a Gallagher, baby, I'm as caveman as they come.

No matter what scars you have, Sierra, you'l always be beautiful. No amount of ink or scars will make your skin anything but perfect to me.

Beauty is skin deep. A tattoo travels all the way to the soul.

I could describe the way the smells of brine and sun have permeated every stone of every street, or the way the tide callers stand at their watchtowers and cry out the hour for their Cities. I could tell you of the many-shaped ships that crisscross the seas with careful writing stitched on their sails praying for good fortune and fair winds. I could tell you of the squid-ink tattoos that adorn the hands of every husband and wife, and of the lesser word-workers who prick words into flesh.

Tall, broad-shouldered, every inch of him seemingly corded with muscle, he was a male blooded with power. He paused in a dusty shaft of sunlight, his silver hair gleaming. As if his delicately pointed ears and slightly elongated canines weren’t enough to scare the living shit out of everyone in that alley, including the now-whimpering madwoman behind Celaena, a wicked-looking tattoo was etched down the left side of his harsh face, the whorls of black ink stark against his sun-kissed skin.

I have only one memory of getting here, and even that is just a single image: black ink curling around the side of a neck, the corner of a tattoo, and the gentle sway that could only mean he was carrying me. He turns off the bathroom light and gets an ice pack from the refrigerator in the corner of the room. As he walks toward me, I consider closing my eyes and pretending to be asleep,but then our eyes meet and it's too late. "Your hands," I croak. "My hands are none of your concern," he replies. He rests his knee on the mattress and leans over me,slipping the ice pack under my head. Before he pulls away,I reach out to touch the cut on the side of his lip but stop when I realize what I am about to do, my hand hovering. What do you have to lose? I ask myself. I touch my fingertips lightly to his mouth. "Tris," he says, speaking against my fingers. "I'm all right." "Why were you there?" I ask, letting my hand drop. "I was coming back from the control room. I heard a scream." "What did you do to them?" I say. "I deposited Drew at the infirmary a half hour ago," he says. "Peter and Al ran. Drew claimed they were just trying to scare you.At least,I think that's what he was trying to say." "He's in bad shape?" "He'll live," he replies. He adds bitterly, "In what condition, I can't say." It isn't right to wish pain on other people just because they hurt me first. But white-hot triumph races through me at the thought of Drew at the infirmary, and I squeeze Four's arm. "Good," I say.My voice sounds tight and fierce.Anger builds inside me, replacing my blood with bitter water and filling me, consuming me.I wantt o break something,or hit something, but I am afraid to move,so I start crying instead. Four crouches by the side of the bed, and watches me. I see no sympathy in his eyes.I would have been disappointed if I had. He pulls his wrist free and, to my surprise, rests his hand on the side of my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone.His fingers are careful. "I could report this," he says. "No," I reply. "I don't want them to think I'm scared." He nods.He moves his thumb absently over my cheekbone, back and forth. "I figured you would say that." "You think it would be a bad idea if I sat up?" "I'll help you." Four grips my shoulder with one hand and holds my head steady with the other as I push myself up.Pain rushes through my body in sharp bursts,but I try to ignore it,stifling a groan. He hands me the ice pack. "You can let yourself be in pain," he says. "It's just me here.

She knew every scar, every tattoo. She had traced every one of those scars and tattoos with her tongue. With her fingertips. She'd memorized them until they were etched so deeply in her brain, she could have drawn them and gotten every detail perfect.

I’m lying on Cash’s chest, tracing his tattoo. “What does this mean?” I whisper. “It’s the Chinese symbol for awesome,” he teases lightly. I giggle. “If it’s not, which I imagine it isn’t, then it should be.” “Are you paying me a compliment? I just want to be sure, so I don’t miss it.” I slap his ribs. “You make it sound like I’m mean and horrible because I don’t throw myself at your feet.” “You don’t have to throw yourself at my feet. Although if you want to, I’m sure I can think of something for you to do while you’re down there.” I look up at him and he’s waggling his eyebrows again. “I’m sure you could.” Shaking my head, I settle back onto his chest and resume tracing the ink shapes. “Seriously, what do they mean?” Cash is quiet for so long I begin to think he’s not going to answer me. But then he finally speaks. “It’s a collage of things that remind me of my family.

sat up high, oak branch ’tween my knees, and watched the tattooed man stride about in the snow. Pictures all over his face, no skin left no more, just ink and blood. Looking for me, he was. Always looking for me. He left red drops in the white, fallen from his fish knife.

What is art? Art is tar, rearranged. Art is tar on canvas or tar on tarp or tar on a naked body. Art is a bird chirping changed into something visual. Art is an image of a thousand beaks breaking into the office of a quack doctor. I know that doctor, and I've personally spoken to ten of those beaks. Art is rhythm, two hands clapping at a urinal while a third shakes off pee to the beat. Good art stays with you your whole life, especially if that good art is a tattoo. Good art is my name, written backwards, inked on your upper lip in a furry font. Art imitates life, just as life imitates Orafoura. Art can be anything from a Manet to a Monet to a painting of money to a missile. Art can save the world, or devastate it. (We could drop another big bomb on Japan, though I'm not advocating dumping Basquiat paintings on Hiroshima). Art rhymes with a bodily function, and everybody should let their creativity rip everywhere from the privacy of their bathrooms to small heated boxes with four of their closest friends. Art is thinking outside that box, and desperately trying to escape.

Grabbing my hand he pulls me to him, and grabs my hips, digging his hand in. "I have the perfect spot for your first tattoo." Reaching for the bottom of my dress, he lifts the front so only he can see, and runs his thumb over my hipbone. "Perfect.

At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client's back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the needle turned and said, 'Jesus is cool, it's just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.' This profound, if crass, statement recognizes that the power of the gospel lay in its ability to be a counter-cultural and revolutionary force - not only a story to believe, but a distinctive way of life. The man's comment prompted me to consider the questions: Am I in some measure complicit in the domestication of Jesus?

When You Return Fallen leaves will climb back into trees. Shards of the shattered vase will rise and reassemble on the table. Plastic raincoats will refold into their flat envelopes. The egg, bald yolk and its transparent halo, slide back in the thin, calcium shell. Curses will pour back into mouths, letters un-write themselves, words siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair will darken and become the feathers of a black swan. Bullets will snap back into their chambers, the powder tamped tight in brass casings. Borders will disappear from maps. Rust revert to oxygen and time. The fire return to the log, the log to the tree, the white root curled up in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly into the lark’s lungs, answers become questions again. When you return, sweaters will unravel and wool grow on the sheep. Rock will go home to mountain, gold to vein. Wine crushed into the grape, oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in to the spider’s belly. Night moths tucked close into cocoons, ink drained from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds will be returned to coal, coal to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light to stars sucked back and back into one timeless point, the way it was before the world was born, that fresh, that whole, nothing broken, nothing torn apart.

When we are together, it's just us. No one else." She swallowed hard, but relaxed at his words. "That's good because I don't share.

What happened? Who do I need to kill?

This woman could make a saint sin.

It's how we work," his brother said simply. "I plan. Jake refines. Owen organizes. And you growl and grunt.

He's lost everything once, and now, he wasn't sure if he had anything left to lose.

When the pieces fell around him, he'd pick them up. It was what he was good at, after all. Restoring what was once lost, what could never be perfectly whole again.

Scottish Play Doe was born at 4:13 a.m. on September 6th. The ink was barely dry on his father's new tattoo.

Hearts get inked too but we don't get to choose the tattoo.

Sahara traced the ink with a trembling finger before she bent to press her lips to the tattoo, her touch tender, her eyes dark with emotion. "I've branded you". "You did that a long time ago".

And even if she loses the charms, she thinks, they’ll always be a part of her. The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin. People get tattoos to have a permanent reminder of things they love or believe or fear, but though she’ll never regret the turtle, she has no need to ink her flesh again to remember the past. She had not known the markings would be etched so deep.

No one understands you better than me. There’s no one who knows you more intimately, who will love you more passionately.” He strokes my face, then lays his hand over mine, caressing the tattooed scar along my palm. “We even mark ourselves the same. Our kills carved and inked on our flesh.

All the things I’ve done to my body, I’ve done out of love. Seriously. I’ve gotten ink to remind me of all sorts of places and memories, but at the core, everything I’ve had done has been my way of saying that this is my body. That I don’t want the body everybody else told me I should have.

He spoke the common tongue, and his accent was subtle—lovely, if she was feeling generous enough to admit it. A soft, rolling purr. “Fair enough. But what am I to call you?” She gripped the saddle but didn’t mount it. “Rowan.” His tattoo seemed to soak up the sun, so dark it looked freshly inked.

One can grow accustomed to carrying unseeable scars, as if the tattoo one wears is inked in flesh tone over flesh tone; but nevertheless one is still covered in secret, painted with secret, stained by it.

I'm nineteen tree rings and mashed acorns stop up my veins when I can't clot. Oh god, you beautiful person, I'll let you lick the salt off of my tattoos as if they were wounds, wounds made of ink and stories.

He recognized this particular act for what it was: a woman’s need to mark her man. The scary part was, he didn’t care. Hell, at this moment, if she wanted to tattoo her name on his ass, he’d go buy the fucking ink.

You're maybe eighteen. Your mother didn't love you enough so you decided to pierce your lip and brand your body to piss her off. You hang around this band because they make you feel like you belong. And most days you wish you were in a band of your own, but you know that probably will never happen." I met his eyes waiting. I'm twenty. my mother has an assload of tattoos herself, she thinks its art. I have a lip ring because it turns girls on when I do this." He licked his lip, lingering on the metal for a couple intense seconds. My eyes fluttered with nervousness.

He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she'd fall on her face. She said, If we don't let her have one like all the other girls she'll feel singled out. It'll become an issue. She'll long for one and she'll long to turn into one. Repression breeds sublimation. You know that. He said, It's not just the pointy plastic tits, it's the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what's his name, the one with the underwear glued on. She said, Better to get it over with when she's young. He said, All right but don't let me see it. She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she'd been tattooed all over her body with purple ink, in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell. He said, I guess we're safe.

Your basic-type jailhouse tatt is homemade with sewing needles from the jailhouse canteen and some blue ink from the cartridge of a fountain pen promoted from the breast pocket of an unaltert public defender, is why the jailhouse genre is always the same night-sky blue. The needle is dipped in the ink and jabbed as deep into the tattooee as it can be jabbed without making him recoil and fucking up your aim. Just a plain ultraminimal blue square like Gately's got on his right wrist takes half a day and hundreds of individual jabs. How come the lines are never quite straight and the color's never quite all the way solid is it's impossible to get all the individualized punctures down to the same uniform deepness in the, like, twitching flesh. This is why jailhouse tatts always look like they were done by sadistic children on rainy afternoons.

I chose to ink myself… to ink others, because it speaks to me. I crave bringing a piece of another person up out to their skin with my art. To me, tattooing means I touch someone’s heart and find who they are, leaving it behind after I am done.

Decker grinned, taking the cup and then blowing over it. "What';; you give me for my silence?" Austin flipped him off. "I won't kick your ass." "You can try , old man." "You're getting closer to the big number, too." Decker grinned. "I'm twenty-nine. You're thirty-eight. Those are two different big numbers, bro. Just saying." "Fuck you." "No thanks. I prefer my bedmates with a little less chest hair.

The desks were white and waiting for spills and scratches and stains. They might hurt as they went on – like tattoos – but they would make each of the tables unique, and for the dying artists they would be poignant reminders of hands that held and painted and cut and inked.

I’m a tattoo artist, I’ll probably always be a tattoo artist and I don’t know how that plays into your future or the future you have planned after school and frankly I don’t care. This is what I have to offer you Shaw and just like you let me be your first, I’m letting you be mine,” I covered her entire palm with a detailed drawing of a sacred heart, it matched the one I had inked on the center of my chest. It had flames dancing up the back, a crown of thorns on top of it, a spray of roses along the bottom and in the center I drew a scrolling banner with my name in the center. “Here’s my heart Shaw. You have it in your hands and I promise you’re the first and last person to ever touch it. You need to be careful with it because it’s far more fragile than I ever thought and if you try and give it back I’m not taking it. I don’t know enough about love to know for sure that’s what this between us is, but I know that for me it’s you and only you from here on out and I can only promise to be careful and not push you away again. Life without you in it is doable, but if I have a choice I want to do it with you by my side and I’m telling you I’m not running away from the work it takes to make that happen. Shaw I’m not scared of us anymore.

I like proving people wrong, and we all know how much I adore being different. So when the haters expect me to whip off my shirt and reveal a scrawny torso scattered with careless ink, but they instead find me ripped as hell, draped in intricate, artistic tattoos… I can’t help but feel smug.

Your tattoo,” I said without thinking. “Does it mean anything?” “Don't most tattoos?” he said. “I kind of want something to have significance if it's in permanent ink. On my skin.” “What does it mean?” “It's a warning,” he said. Right. “Do you have others?” I couldn't see any, despite his short sleeves. “I mean, under your clothes?” What was wrong with me? Was it inappropriate hour or something? “One more.” He was trying not to smile. “But I need to know you a little better first.

Our marriage began with knots and fangs; vows inked on skin. Black venom stained our fingers, twinned snakes strangling the marriage vein in Celtic macramé – cocksure monogamy. We became one, me and the gun, the serpent reeling itself from the needle. I had few firsts left; marriage a wild west for the hedonist. Snakes unspooled like figure-eights, symbols of eternity. Acrimony, alimony; Leave the moaning to adults. We children will be wiser wed, inoculated – these hickeys, homeopathy.

After a few seconds of scraping, I realize what he has isn’t a trail, it’s a whole forest! Ack! Weren’t all men supposed to shave their chest and stuff nowadays? Whatever happened to having fuzz-free Hollywood heroes as role models? At least my embarrassment is completely foregone by the irritation at his lack of upkeep. The only thing distracting me now is that heady mix of musk, shaving cream and a distinctly…male scent. And God knows that is one seriously jeopardizing distraction. Especially with a whizzing needle in one’s hand.

The addition of knitting needles and twirling yarn made Beckett’s forearm ink the exact replica of the tattoo on Mouse’s chest. “He was my friend and my brother.

He ran his hand over his chest and stopped above his heart where a black tattoo of an ornate skeleton key was inked on his skin.She had its other half-a lock in the shape of a heart with a keyhole in the center-tattooed on her lower stomach beside her right hip bone. Laying on top of her, he'd slide down to kiss her breasts and their two tattoos would come together. Lock and key.

He didn't move, didn't blink. He didn't seem like a man who heard no too often. Too bad. But he must have found something he liked, because he slowly undid his tie, then unbuttoned his shirt. She would not drool. He didn't have an ounce of fat on him. Austin had said Morgan was forty years old, but he didn't look it. Nor did he have the body of a twenty-year-old man. Callie didn't want that anyway. His body had aged beautifully and was clearly well cared for. He had some hair on his chest, but not much. The hair on his belly trailed down to beneath his dress pants and Callie did her best not to swallow her tongue. She persevered. Barely.

It was cheerful inside, without the aggressive Easy Rider feel of some of the other tattoo parlors in the city, where the handle-jawed thugs wielding the tattoo guns looked like ink was just a side job, their main work, contract killings.

...The man who stood before her was taller and stranger than anyone she had ever encountered. His unkempt hair was a long dark brown, partially braided and twisted around twigs, the tips of his pointed ears poking between strands. His bare chest made her flush, but it was completely covered in green inked tattoos. Leather breeches creaked when he shifted. He held his hand out to her, uncurling fingers with long nails. "Aislin," he repeated, his voice gruff and purring, "do not be frightened. I have been waiting so long for you.

Ink slipped his fingers under his vest and rubbed his chest. She licked her lips, almost tasting the slightly salty skin under his shirt. It seemed like forever since she'd put her mouth on him. His body was a puzzle, all covered with tattoos waiting for her to put the pieces together.

Go to dinner with me?” His voice whispers against my ear. I start to shake my head when his fingertip lightly traces the birdcage tattoo on my arm. My eyes shut at the sensation. His touch. “I dream about you almost every night.” Join the club, buddy, I want to tell him. I dream about me every night, too… well, until I met him. Now I dream too damn much about him. “Just one date and I will leave you alone if you never want to see me again. Deal?” I open my eyes to gaze into his. There are too many things happening at once. Everything within me says to tell him no. Nothing good can come of this. I know what I have to tell him. “Dinner, not a date,” I say, looking him square in the eyes. Holy hell! What did you just do, Keller? Really? Seriously? He grins, not hiding his happiness at my words. I step away, allowing him time to button his shirt up. “Dinner then dessert, and, Keller, it will definitely be a date,” he says,

Nonna is convinced that the ink from tattoos gets way inside and,like the mercury in tinned tuna, causes brain damage.She doesn't know that Leo has a lip print tattooed on his left butt cheek. Now,maybe Leo's not the best argument against ink as brain damager, but heaven help him when someone lets that secret out to Nonna.

The hairs on the back of her neck tingled and she shivered. She turned toward the door and blinked once. Twice. The sexiest man she'd ever seen in her life stood in the doorway. No, stood wasn't a good word, not with the way his presence filled the shop. Dear Lord, was she panting? His broad shoulders were encased in a suit that had t cost more than her rent, but she didn't care about that. His thick chest tapered into a trim waist and strong thighs. Just the thought of those thighs made her clench her own. He had his hands fisted at his sides, and oh God, those hands. Large, thick and they looked so out of place compared to his classy suit. It looked as if he actually used his hands rather than merely sitting behind a desk as his attire suggested,

Her uneasy gaze skittered along the length of his arms, which were exposed by his rolled-up shirtsleeves... and stopped at the astonishing sight of a design that had been inked onto his right forearm. It was a small black horse with wings. Noticing her mesmerized stare, Rohan lowered his arm to give her a better view. "An Irish symbol," he murmured. "A nightmare horse, called a pooka." The absurd-sounding word brought a faint smile to Daisy's lips. "Does it wash off?" she asked hesitantly. He shook his head, his lashes half lowering over his remarkable eyes. "Is a pooka like the Pegasus of the Greek myths?" Daisy asked, flattening herself as close to the wall as possible. Rohan glanced down her body, taking a kind of leisurely inventory that no man ever had before. "No. He's far more dangerous. He has eyes of yellow fire, a stride that clears mountains, and he speaks in a human voice as deep as a cave. At midnight, he may stop in front of your house and call out your name if he wants to take you for a ride. If you go with him, he'll fly you across earth and oceans... and if you ever return, your life will never be the same.

I have something to show you." He sank down next to me and handed me a sketchbook. I opened it. And saw the mermaid. She was drawn in colored ink, exquisitely detailed; each scale had a little picture in it: a pyramid, a rocket, a peacock, a lamp. Her torso was patterened red, like a tattoo, like coral. She had a thin strand of seaweed around her neck, with a starfish holding on to the center. Her hair was a tumble of loose black curls. She had my face. I turned the page.And another and another. There she was fighting a creature that was half human, half octopus. Exploring a cave. Riding a shark. Laughing and petting a stingray that rested on her lap. "I'm calling her Cora Lia for the moment," Alex told me. "I thought about Corella, but it sounded like cheap dishware." "She's...amazing." "She's fierce. Fighting the Evil Sea-Dragon King and his minions." I traced the red tattoo on her chest. "This is beautiful." Alex reached into my sweater, pulled the loose neck of the T-shirt away from my shoulder. I didn't stop him. "It looks like coral to me." He touched me, then,the pad of his thumb tracing the outline of the scar. It felt strange, partly because of the difference in the tissue, but more because in the last few years, the only hands that had touched me there were mine. I set the book aside carefully. "Guess I don't see what you do." "That's too bad, because I see you perfectly." I curved myself into him. "Maybe you're exactly what I need." "Like there's any doubt?" He buried his face in my neck.I didn't stop him. "So." "So?" "We'll kill a few hours, watch the sunrise, have pancakes, and you'll drive home." "What?" I felt him smile against my skin. "I got you swimming with sharks. Next on the Conquer Your Fears list is driving a stick shift.Right?" "One thing at a time," I said. Then, "Oh. Do that again." In another story, the intrepid heroine would have gone running out and splashed in the surf, hypothermia be damned. She would have driven the Mustang home, booked a haircut, taken up stand-up comedy, and danced on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. But this was me, and I was moving at my own pace. Truth: My story started a hundred years ago. There's time.

If you were to look on him fleetingly, to spare him only a passing glance, you would see only a man. If you looked a moment longer, you might get the feeling that there was something about him, something distinctly different. You might notice something peculiar about his eyes, might spot something strange about the tattoos running the length of his arms. Something out of place, something you cannot quite put your finger on….But to you, he still would be just a man. But a clever eye…a clever eye could see him for what he truly is. A clever eye would notice how his pupils taper at their tops and bottoms. A clever eye would see that his irises are no natural color. A clever eye would see that the patterns coiled on his arms, like blackened tongues of roiling flame, are not sunken into his skin like a tattoo’s Ink, but gently beveled at their edges — a part of his flesh. A clever eye could tell that, no, he is not just a man. Not just a Human. He is a Majiski — one of my people. -The Penitent God

Go get her,' Amren hissed. 'Right now.' 'No,' I said, and hated the word. They gaped at me, and I wanted to roar at the sight of the blood coating them, at my unconscious and suffering brothers on the carpet before them. But I managed to say to my cousin, 'Weren't you listening to what Feyre said to him? She promised to destroy him- from within.' Mor's face paled, her magic flaring on Azriel's chest. 'She's going into that house to take him down. To take them all down.' I nodded. 'She is now a spy- with a direct line t me. What the King of Hybern does, where he goes, what his plans are, she will know. And report back.' Far between us, faint and soft, hidden so none might find it... between us lay a whisper of colour, and joy, of light and shadow- a whisper of her. Our bond. 'She's your mate,' Amren bit at me. 'Not your spy. Go get her.' 'She is my mate. And my spy,' I said too quietly. 'And she is the High Lady of the Night Court.' 'What?' Mor whispered. I caressed a mental finger down that bond now hidden deep, deep within us, and said, 'If they had removed her other glove, they would have seen a second tattoo on her right arm. The twin to the other. Inked last night, when we crept out, found a priestess, and I swore her in as my High Lady.' 'Not- not consort,' Amren blurted, blinking. I hadn't seen her surprised in... centuries. 'Not consort, not wife. Feyre is High Lady of the Night Court.' My equal in every way; she would wear my crown, sit on a throne beside mine. Never sidelined, never deigned to breeding and parties and child-rearing. My queen. As if in answer, a glimmer of love shuddered down the bond. I clamped down on the relief that threatened to shatter any calm I feigned having. 'You mean to tell me,' Mor breathed, 'that my High Lady is now surrounded by enemies?' A lethal sort of calm crept over her tear-stained face. 'I mean to tell you,' I said, watching the blood clot on Cassian's wings with Amren's tending. Beneath Mor's own hands. Azriel's bleeding at least eased. Enough to keep them alive until the healer got here. 'I mean to tell you,' I said again, my power building and rubbing itself against my skin, my bones, desperate to be unleashed upon the world, 'that your High Lady made a sacrifice for her court- and we will move when the time is right.' Perhaps Lucien being Elain's mate would help- somehow, I'd find a way. And then I'd assist my mate in ripping the Spring Court, Ianthe, those mortal queens, and the King of Hybern to shreds. Slowly. 'Until then?' Amren demanded. 'What of the Cauldron- of the book?' 'Until then,' I said, staring toward the door as if I might see her walk through it, laughing and vibrant and beautiful, 'we got to war.

They started calling people my grandfather’s age “generation ink”. He represents the era when extensive tattoos tipped into the mainstream. Now the old men and women sit together in the lounge room of my grandfather’s nursing home, watching daytime television. They don’t watch sport. Tattoos from their wrist to shoulders and across their chest, snake beneath their woolen cardigans and cotton shirts. Withered souls eternally painted in often incomprehensible scrawling. Faded colours. But that’s not to say that they regret getting inked. Far from it. It’s a part of who they are. As real and as precious as the blank skin they were born with. Their tastes in music haven’t mellowed either. They slowly approach the sound-system, leaning on their walking frame, and skip to songs by Pantera and Sepultura. Or Metallica, Slayer and Iron Maiden. My grandfather enjoyed punk and post-rock bands like Millencolin, Thursday, Coheed and Cambria or At The Drive-In.

Eh? How 'bout that?" Bill nudged her. "Did I promise to show you love or did I promise to show you love?" "Sure,they seem like they're in love." Luce shrugged. "But-" "But what?Do you have any idea how painful that is? Look at that guy. He makes getting inked look like being caressed by a soft breeze." Luce squirmed on the branch. "Is that the lesson here? Pain equals love?" "You tell me," Bill said. "It may surprise you to hear this,but the ladies aren't exactly banging down Bill's door." "I mean,if I tattooed Daniel's same on my body would that mean I loved him more than I already do?" "It's a symbol,Luce." Bill let out a raspy sigh. "You're being too literal. Think about it this way: Daniel is the first good-looking boy LuLu has ever seen. Until he washed ashore a few months ago, this girl's whole world was her father and a few fat natives." "She's Miranda," Luce said, remembering the love story from The Tempest, which she'd read in her tenth-grade Shakespeare seminar. "How very civilized of you!" Bill pursed his lips with approval. "They are liek Ferdinand and Miranda: The handsome foreigner shipwrecks on her shores-" "So,of course it was love at first sight for LuLu," Luce murmured. This was what she was afraid of: the same thoughtless,automatic love that had bothered her in Helston. "Right," Bill said. "She didn't have a choice but to fall for him.But what's interesting here is Daniel. You see, he didn't have to teach her to craft a woven sail, or gain her father's trust by producing a season's worth of fish to cure,or exhibit C"-Bill pointed at the lovers on the beach-"agree to tattoo his whole body according to her local custom.It would have been enough if Daniel had just shown up.LuLu would have loved him anyway." "He's doing it because-" Luce thought aloud. "Because he wants to earn her love.Because otherwise,he would just be taking advantage of their curse. Because no matter what kind of cycle they're bound to,his love for her is...true.

That life and this. This life. That life. The one beneath is drawn in solid lines and bold strokes; it is a picture drawn in permanence with ink. It’s a tattoo. Indelible. The one on top of it is sketched on vellum in soft brushes of charcoal, easily smudged. It covers the one beneath, but can’t hide it. That life. This life. It looks as if you can have both. I mean, they’re both right there, one on top of the other, and it looks as if they’ll blend. But they never will. So, you take this thing. You take this thing you want, and you put it in a box and you close the lid. You can let your fingers trace the cracks, the places where the light gets in, the dark gets out, but the lid stays on. You don’t look inside. You don’t look at this thing you want so much, because you can. Not. Have. It. So there’s this box, you know, with the thing inside, and you could throw it away or bury it or shoot it into space; you could set it on fire and watch it burn to ashes, but really, none of that would make a difference, because you cannot destroy what you want. It only makes you want it more. So. You take this thing you want and you put it in a box and you close the lid. And you hold the box close to your heart, which is where it wants to go, and you pretend it doesn’t kill you every time you feel yourself breathe.