"You'd think people had better things to gossip about," said Ginny as she sat on the common room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. "Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest."
Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her it's a Hungarian Horntail," said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. "Much more macho."
"Thanks," said Harry, grinning. "And what did you tell her Ron’s got?"
"A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see."
— Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim)

"...heavily tattooed women can be said to control & subvert the ever-present 'male gaze' by forcing men (and women) to look at their bodies in a manner that exerts control."
— Margo Demello

"Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past."
— Jack London

"I don't know. I had to be something, didn't I?"
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman: Book of Dreams)

"Tattoos have a power and magic all their own. They decorate the body but they also enhance the soul.
"
— Michelle Delio

"You purchase pain with all that joy can give and die of nothing but a rage to live."
— Alexander Pope

"You'll have to excuse Zo's manners. She was raised by a group of indigenous swamp wallabies and is at times uncomfortable conversing with civilized humans."
"Look, it's like this-" Zo started to say, but then she interrupted herself. "Swamp wallabies?"
— Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Tattoo)

"I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo."
— Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader)

"Outside of having kids, getting tattooed is one of the worst mistakes a person can make, yet somehow (much like having kids) millions of people do it every year. "
— Aviva Yael

"The TATTOO is the mark of the soul. It can act as a window, through which we can see inside, or it can be a shield to protect us from those who can not see past the surface"
— Unknown