Black lettering tattoo on a forearm reading 'i fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly, and then all at once.' against grass.

Quote lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm lies on grass, carrying a line of black serif lettering that reads 'i fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly, and then all at once.' The text is set in a typewriter-style face with a large opening quotation mark, running across the arm in two lines. The ink is solid black with no colour, and the photograph is taken from above at a slight angle.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Lettering

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

Forgive the typing. The purser let me have the office typewriter for an hour on condition I don't tell the chief engineer, who thinks it's a machine for pirates. We are four days out from Montevideo and the water has been flat as an ironing board, which the cook says is God's way of telling us to sleep. I have been sleeping badly. Mostly I lie in my bunk listening to the screw turn over and thinking about Marjorie Pike at the lending library, who pressed that battered paperback into my hands and said I wouldn't be able to put it down. She was right, which I resent.

I finished it last night on the forward deck with a torch clamped in my teeth. There is a line near the end about love arriving the way sleep does, so gradually you can never name the moment you crossed over. I copied it onto the flyleaf, and then, because I am a fool, onto the back of my hand in biro, and the bosun laughed until he had to sit down on a coil of rope. The words were smudged by breakfast, so I went over them again in the galley with a darning needle and a little of the cook's soot.

You will say I am a sentimental old thing. You are probably right. But I have decided something. When we tie up in Hull I am going to find a parlour near the fish docks, a proper one with a man who keeps his needles in a tin, and have the line done properly in black, the way Marjorie's book was printed, with the opening quotation mark standing up like a little sail. I am not asking your permission. I am telling you so you can't say you didn't know.

Tell Mum the sea is behaving itself. Tell her I am eating vegetables.

Your loving sister, Ruth

P.S. Don't let Marjorie know I finished it. She'll only want it back.