Black lettering tattoo on a thigh in a lettering style, with a serif quote about courage between two ornamental scroll flourishes.

Lettered quote tattoo on the thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo sits on the thigh and shows a quote set in black capital and lowercase lettering, with the attribution 'e.e. cummings' beneath it. Two ornate black scrollwork flourishes frame the text above and below. The ink is solid black with no shading or colour, and the text is centred and filling most of the frame against a light, patterned background.

Lettering Thigh Quote Text Lettering Scrollwork Flourish Courage

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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

Dear Tom, the kettle has boiled twice while I sat here, so forgive the blots. Your father's oilskin is still on the hook behind the scullery door. I have not moved it and I have not decided whether to, which is about where I have got to with most things since the Marguerite went down the coast without you.

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Mrs Abernethy from the chandlery brought round your postcard on Tuesday. She read it aloud on the step before she handed it over, the printed verse on the front that you had clearly chosen for its nerve, and then the line you had underlined in pencil about courage and growing into yourself. Underneath, in your scrawl, you had written, Mum, this is the bit I keep getting wrong. I laughed at that, properly, for the first time in a month.

So I have done something foolish. This morning I took the oilskin down and carried it to the harbour office in the rain, and I asked Mr Pell whether the Calliope still needed a cook for the Lisbon run. He looked at me as if I had asked to swim it. I told him I have fed twelve men on a trawler for nine winters and can sleep standing up. He says he will think on it until Friday.

The coat is on my shoulders as I write, stiff at the cuffs and smelling of tar and your father's pipe. I am not wearing it because I am brave. I am wearing it because it fits, and because a man ought to be told where his son is wrong by someone who has been there. Keep the postcard. I will bring the kettle, and the coat, and we will see together what you have got wrong.