Tattoos

The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who have tattoos, and those who are afraid of people with tattoos. – Author Unknown

The tattoo attracts and also repels precisely because it is different. – Margo DeMello, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Co

For westerners, the tattoo has always been a metaphor of difference. – Margo DeMello, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Co

There is no “underground” community, no dark den of drunken sailors initiating themselves into manhood via cheap, ill-conceived exercises in bodily perforation; it’s just a group of people who delight in using their bodies as billboards. – Joanne McCubrey, “Walking Art: Tattoos,” Mountain Democrat Weekend magazine, 199

Show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with an interesting past. – Jack London

Women, don’t get a tattoo. That butterfly looks great on your breast when you’re twenty or thirty, but when you get to seventy, it stretches into a condor. – Billy Elmer

You may lose your most valuable property through misfortune in various ways. You may lose your house, your wife and other treasures. But of your moko, you cannot be deprived except by death. It will be your ornament and companion until your last day. – Netana Whakaari of Waimana

I always look for a woman who has a tattoo. I see a woman with a tattoo, and I’m thinking, okay, here’s a gal who’s capable of making a decision she’ll regret in the future. – Richard Jeni

For someone who likes tattoos, the most precious thing is bare skin. – Cher

A man without tattoos is invisible to the Gods. – Iban Proverb, as quoted on vanishingtattoo.com

Good tattoos aren’t cheap and cheap tattoos aren’t good. – Author Unknown

You think it, I ink it. – Saying of Tattooists

Tattoo. What a loaded word it is, rife with associations to goons, goofs, bikers, tribal warriors, carnival artists, drunken sailors and floozies. – Jon Anderson, “Epidermal Dalis,” Chicago Tribune, 6 October 1994

Inking without a plan gives Booth freedom to explore the desires of those seated in his chair, he says, to feed off their energy, allowing his clients’ demons to help guide the needle. – Joshua Lipton, about tattoo artist Paul Booth, “Bad Skin,” Rolling Stone, 2002 M

Beauty is skin deep. A tattoo goes all the way to the bone. – Vince Hemingson

Beauty is skin deep, unless you have really bad tattoos. – Jacob Calle

Tattooing is about personalizing the body, making it a true home and fit temple for the spirit that dwells inside it…. Tattooing therefore, is a way of keeping the spiritual and material needs of my body in balance. – Michelle Delio

Your body is a temple, but how long can you live in the same house before you redecorate? – Author Unknown

I want to get a tattoo of myself on my entire body, only two inches taller. – Steven Wright

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872