Black ink tattoos of book spines, quotation marks and handwritten script quotes across a man's crossed forearms, in fine line style.

Book spines and literary quotes on forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are crossed over a denim shirt, covered in black ink tattoos. Book spines with titles, large quotation marks, script and block lettering quotes, and small line drawn figures are arranged across both arms. The linework is fine and mostly unshaded, with the quotation marks in solid black and grey tones, and the composition spreads the designs along the length of each forearm.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Lettering Quote Silhouette Figure Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Gwen laid the six spines out on the bench before she had her coat off, the way other people deal cards. Perks, Choke, 1984, Fountainhead, Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World. "Somebody read these in the order they wanted to leave," she said, and I didn't argue, because the boards had gone soft from a bath and the glue had turned to grey dust under my thumbnail.

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The bindery sat above a shut chemist on Harrow Street, up a staircase that smelt of cold radiators and wet wool. Gwen had one rule about the work: she never asked what a book meant to the person who brought it in, only where it had been kept. So I learned nothing from the spines except that they had sat on a west-facing windowsill for years, because the cloth was bleached on one side and dark on the other.

Tucked inside the last one, folded small, was a ticket stub from the Flying Swan at Margate, dated August 1961, with a pencilled line on the back in a careful hand: it goes on. Gwen read it, turned it over, and put it back exactly where it had been before she stitched the signatures.

We rebound all six in the same green cloth, cut to the same height. When the glue had set, she carried them down to the shop window and stood them in a row where the afternoon sun could reach them. Nobody walking past would guess they had once been shouting at each other.