Black lettering on a forearm reading "A book is a loaded gun", set in a plain serif typeface in a lettering style on the inner forearm.

Quote tattoo on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm with the words "A book is a loaded gun" tattooed in a single line across the skin. The letters use a plain, typewriter-like serif typeface with clean, even black outlines and no shading. The ink is black, and the forearm sits against a grey carpet with a tan sleeve at the edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The Mulholland volume came back to the library this morning, three weeks overdue and smelling of coal smoke. Someone had gone through it with a red biro and underlined every line about the owner of Bellhouse Pit, then written in the margin, in capitals that dug into the paper, THIS IS WHY. I stood at the returns desk for a long while with it open in my hands. Mr Oakes, who runs the bakery on the corner, asked if I was all right, and I said I was reading.

You were always the one who wanted to know what a book could do. Well, here is my answer, which I have had forty years to settle on. A book is a loaded gun because it sits quietly on a shelf for decades, looking harmless, and then some stranger takes it down on a wet Tuesday and the thing goes off in them. You cannot see the bullet. You only hear it later, in the way a man stops touching his hat when he talks about the owner.

I did not tell the constable. I did not tell the Hall. I put the book back between the Bible and the atlas where it has always lived, and I left a slip in the back for whoever wants it next. Let them see the red ink, I thought. Let them decide for themselves whose side the words were on.

I am sending you the bookmark you left in 1961, the one with the swallow on it. Keep it somewhere it can be found.

Love, Aunt Win

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