Temporary Tattoo Quotes

Technically, all tattoos are temporary, even permanent ones.

She said 'a tattoo is a badge of validation'. But the truth of the matter is far more revealing. It's a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.

The thing about secrets is they’re mostly regrets, aren’t they? I mean, “good news” secrets aren’t really meant to be kept. Just the embarrassing, shameful kind. Everyone’s said or done something they wish they hadn’t. Maybe they were young and immature, or drunk and displayed temporary poor judgment. Do these things need to be broadcast? Should mistakes be tattooed on forearms?

Being open-minded dramatically reduces one’s chances of getting a permanent tattoo.

My tattoos are permanent; it’s just my body that’s temporary. So is yours. We’re only here on earth for a short while, so I decided a long time ago that I wanted to decorate myself as playfully as I can, while I still have time.” I love this so much, I can’t even tell you. Because—like Eileen—I also want to live the most vividly decorated temporary life that I can. I don’t just mean physically; I mean emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. I don’t want to be afraid of bright colors, or new sounds, or big love, or risky decisions, or strange experiences, or weird endeavors, or sudden changes, or even failure.

When I asked her once how she could allow her body to be marked up so casually with permanent ink, she said, “Oh, but you misunderstand! It’s not permanent. It’s just temporary.” Confused, I asked, “You mean, all your tattoos are temporary?” She smiled and said, “No, Liz. My tattoos are permanent; it’s just my body that’s temporary. So is yours. We’re only here on earth for a short while, so I decided a long time ago that I wanted to decorate myself as playfully as I can, while I still have time.

We stopped talking about Zampanô then. She paged her friend Christina who took less than twenty minutes to come over. There were no introductions. We just sat down on the floor and snorted lines of coke off a CD case, gulped down a bottle of wine and then used it to play spin the bottle. They kissed each other first, then they both kissed me, and then we forgot about the bottle, and I even managed to forget about Zampanô, about this, and about how much that attack in the tattoo shop had put me on edge. Two kisses in one kiss was all it took, a comfort, a warmth, perhaps temporary, perhaps false, but reassuring nonetheless, and mine, and theirs, ours, all three of us giggling, insane giggles and laughter with still more kisses on the way, and I remember a brief instant then, out of the blue, when I suddenly glimpsed my own father, a rare but oddly peaceful recollection, as if he actually approved of my play in the way he himself had always laughed and played, always laughing, surrendering to its ease, especially when he soared in great updrafts of light, burning off distant plateaus of bistre & sage, throwing him up like an angel, high above the red earth, deep into the sparkling blank, the tender sky that never once let him down, preserving his attachment to youth, propriety and kindness, his plane almost, but never quite, outracing his whoops of joy, trailing him in his sudden turn to the wind, followed then by a near vertical climb up to the angles of the sun, and I was barely eight and still with him and yes, that the thought that flickered madly through me, a brief instant of communion, possessing me with warmth and ageless ease, causing me to smile again and relax as if memory alone could lift the heart like the wind lifts a wing, and so I renewed my kisses with even greater enthusiasm, caressing and in turn devouring their dark lips, dark with wine and fleeting love, an ancient memory love had promised but finally never gave, until there were too many kisses to count or remember, and the memory of love proved not love at all and needed a replacement, which our bodies found, and then the giggles subsided, and the laughter dimmed, and darkness enfolded all of us and we gave away our childhood for nothing and we died and condoms littered the floor and Christina threw up in the sink and Amber chuckled a little and kissed me a little more, but in a way that told me it was time to leave.

She was pretty in a way I wasn’t used to. Not like most you girls bowing to the latest beauty trends, indulging in temporary body modifications from reshaping their noses to plumping their lips, or hips, or rears, depending on what was in. You boys kept pace with pec implants and by buying new, chiseled jawlines. But fads came and went, and the yous altered their looks as often as the seasons. The meis, lacking the funds for such drastic changes, resorted to painting their faces in bright colors, using semipermanent tattoos, and dyeing their hair.

Olive’s tattoo played an important role in the book: it appears on the face of the returned captive, where it registers as a mark of permanent violation, unlike her Mohave wardrobe, which signaled only temporary membership. Olive’s portrait, with her tattoo drawn in finer, more delicate lines than those of the actual tattoo, served as the coda to Life Among the Indians. The blue tattoo was the flourish that would make it a stand-alone story, supplying visual evidence of Olive’s ordeal and its irreversible impact.

away, she and Bernadette had become penpals. They wrote real letters with ink on paper and mailed them with pretty stamps—because everyone knows it is way more fun to open up an envelope with your name on it than to get an e-mail on the computer. Their letters to each other sometimes included surprises like lip balm or temporary tattoos or hair clips. For Hallowe’en, Jasmine had sent Bernadette a giant lollipop with a jack-o’-lantern face. And Bernadette once sent Jasmine a pair of socks with frog cartoons on them, because frogs were Jasmine’s favorite

Bethany was horrified. Rose called tattoos "permanent evidence of temporary insanity".

...Sabina [was] onto something about mehendi not being tantamount to temporary tattoo, and how it's been appropriated by Western capitalist culture. But the mehendi originated in Africa, and so India appropriated it from a people of color as well, according to Upma, and thus we shouldn't wear jeans or listen to Queen, then. But Freddie Mercury was Indian, Sabina pointed out, Parsi, and plus, half of these things are made in India anyways if you check the tags. Somehow eventually arriving at: Whatever it was, why did a white girl have to wear it before it was regarded as cool?

A fourth-grader with a red-tipped Lucky Spike dangling from his lip and a die-cast metal cap gun tucked into the waistband of his Toughskins, riding through South Brook on a Sting-Ray the color of grape soda, was an adolescent American badass circa 1974 - especially if he had a temporary tattoo from a Cracker Jack box adhered to one or both of his pipe-cleaner biceps.

When things were too good, when I was too happy, I reminded myself it wouldn’t last so it wouldn’t hurt when it was gone.” I gazed down into her eyes and nearly laughed at how I could ever think this was temporary. Her name was tattooed on the inner walls of my heart. “But it didn’t help one bit. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

Dex: Sure about that? And why do you say that? Tattooing big beneath your big toe seems logical 2 me.