Written in ink

Well, given how much the diet has slowed down, I don’t see myself hitting my final target weight in April any more.  So I’m rethinking the whole tattoo schedule, along the lines of “I’ve already lost 2 stone, do I not get a reward for that?!” and “I’ve got an interim target coming up which I only have to lose 1.5lb to hit.  I could lose that by next week.  How about I get the tattoo to celebrate hitting that instead?”

Impatient, moi?  Well, yes.  I’m not getting any younger, you know 😉

But at any rate, I’m continuing to browse the tattoo sites and I just happened on this one: The Word Made Flesh

which has a whole load of photos of tattoos which are quotes from people’s favourite books.  Why on earth – as a writer – did it not occur to me before this that I could have words rather than pictures inked in?  You would have thought that was an obvious thing to think of.  Not to me!

On the other hand, I’m having difficulties coming up with a single quote that means as much to me as a cross or a vine scroll.  I suspect that this is a situation in which a picture is worth a thousand words.  All that leaps to mind is

“If this is the Royal Music, no wonder the Kings of Karhide are all mad.”

From Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

A moment’s Googling, mind you, turns up a treasure trove of quotes from Tolkien.  I’ve always admired not only the way he wrote but also the things he had to say about writing, and here he is talking about the happy ending and why it’s a good thing:

“The consolation of fairy stories, the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly, the good catastrophe, the sudden, joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to a fairy tale); this joy, which is one of the things that fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially escapist or fugitive. In it’s fairy tale or other world setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace, never to be counted on to reoccur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, or sorrow and failure, the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies, (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien

I could see

“Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

making a good tattoo. 

How about you?  If you had to choose a quote to have tattooed upon your person, what would it be and why?