Black lettering tattoo on a thigh reading 'It takes courage to grow up and become who you truly are', with scrolled flourishes above and below, against blue fabric.

e.e. cummings quote tattoo on the thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a quotation by e.e. cummings set in black block capitals and italic script, with the phrase 'who you truly are' in the largest letters. Ornate scrolled flourishes sit above and below the text, and the attribution 'e.e. cummings' appears in a smaller script beneath the main lines. The ink is solid black on the skin, and the photograph is taken close up against a blue fabric background.

Lettering Thigh Quote Text Lettering Flourish Scrollwork

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Oddie wanted Pether's off the shop window before the Easter trade, so I went up the stepladder with my brushes, a tin of size and a foul temper. The ironmongery had been Pether's for forty years, and the gilt had gone the colour of weak tea. Under it, if the light was low, you could still read the ghost of the sign my father lettered in 1951, when he taught me that the whole trick was to be bold before you felt sure.

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Her grandson Tom sat on the step eating chips and asked why I didn't just paint over the old letters. Paint remembers everything, I told him, and you have to scrape it back to the bare glass if you want anything to stick. Mrs Oddie had a folded card in her handbag, copied out in her neat schoolroom hand. She unfolded it twice while I worked, the same sentence each time: it takes courage to grow up and become who you truly are. She wanted it under the new name in small italic, where people would pass it on the way to the bus.

The scraping took the whole morning. My first gold stroke wobbled like a drunk on a pier, and I nearly climbed down to fetch a fresh tin. Instead I thought of every safe, dull fascia I had ever painted for other people, every cautious serif I had been paid to copy, and I put the brush back to the glass with a flourish I had no business attempting. It came out crooked and alive.

By noon the window read ODDIE and GRANDSON in shining capitals, with the quotation curling beneath. Tom stood on the pavement with his chips going cold and sounded out each word, his lips moving slowly over the courage part, as if it might be something he could buy by the ounce.