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 Community, 2000


A tattoo.... is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition. ~V. Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives


For westerners, the tattoo has always been a metaphor of difference. ~Margo DeMello, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community, 2000


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, 1990 February 9th


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


Ink to paper is thoughtful
Ink to flesh, hard-core.
If Shakespeare were a tattooist
We’d appreciate body art more.
~Terri Guillemets


From such records on the living pages of unconscious leafy organisms, I find myself unavoidably led a step higher, to gaze at that strangest of all papers, the bodies of living men! There are nice discussions in historical works as to the date of the first English paper-mill, and whether British paper is older than the days of Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth! Say, rather, Queen Boadicea, or, far beyond her, select Queen Anonyma, who reigned in prehistoric times. Our ancestors wrote on their fair skins, in native woad or indigo, what they sought to put on record, and for I know not how many thousand years the practice has prevailed down to our day. We are living writing-paper. ~George Wilson, "Paper, Pen and Ink: An Excursus in Technology," Macmillan's Magazine, November 1859  [a little altered —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


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