Black lettering on the back of a neck reads "open your mind before your mouth" in a blackletter style, placed across the nape.

Open your mind quote across the back of the neck

Lettering · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the back of a neck showing a quotation set in a blackletter-style typeface, reading "open your mind before your mouth" over two lines. The lettering is solid black with smooth, even edges, and the text runs horizontally across the nape. The image is in plain, warm-toned indoor light with a dark top and grey clothing at the bottom of the frame.

Lettering Neck Quote Word Text

Find an artist for this

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

Sit down, sit down, you're blocking the light from the big top, and the light is all the poor old canvas has left. Now where was I. Ah, Ansel Crowe, the strongman, the man who could lift a pony and its owner together. He was the one who told the council in Ludlow that our elephant was sick, when the elephant was only sulking, and they sent us packing before the Thursday matinee.

Keep reading

That was my doing, mind. I was the talker, the patter man, and a patter man's whole trade is saying the right thing at the right speed. I had the rhythm in my mouth like a good tooth. But I hadn't asked the elephant anything. I hadn't asked Ansel what he'd seen. I just opened up, and out came the story that was handiest for me, and by the time I'd finished it had a shape and a sheriff in it.

So I did what the board over the wagon door told me to do, the one painted in black Gothic letters that had gone soft at the corners from years of rain. Open your mind before your mouth. I read it every morning for eleven years and never once read it in time.

We lost the tent that autumn. The elephant went to a farm near Hereford, and Ansel went to his sister's in Shrewsbury. I still tell it at every fair that will have me, because the story is good and the wagon is cold. And every time I reach the part about the council, I stop and ask the crowd a question first. Most of them don't answer. But they wait, and that's the trick of it.