Close-up of a black script lettering tattoo on pale skin reading Find what you love and Let it kill you, with an ampersand between the lines.

Script quote tattoo, Find what you love

Lettering · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a two-line quote in flowing black cursive script, with an ampersand centred between the lines. The strokes are solid and even, with decorative loops on the capital F and L. The photograph is a tight crop in black ink on pale skin, with soft lighting and no other elements in frame.

Lettering Script Quote Ampersand Text

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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

Pull your stools closer to the fire, for the snow has shut the high road and nobody leaves Hollin's Rest before the thaw. Do you see the board above the door, with the looping letters? Mrs Pell paid a sign-writer from Kendal good coin to paint it. Most travellers take it for a bit of cheer, but it was her husband's last request, scratched on a slate in his own hand before the fever took him.

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Ezra Pell kept the lock on the canal below the village for thirty years. Every morning he walked the towpath with his ledger under one arm and his lantern under the other, and he loved that water more than his dinner. When the ice came early one December, the sluice gate jammed, and he went down the iron ladder with a crowbar to free it. His wife stood on the bank and watched the lantern bob under the black surface, then go still. The gate was loosed by morning, and the lantern was found tangled in the reeds, its glass unbroken.

Mrs Pell kept that slate on the mantel and would not let anyone wipe it. The sign-writer told her the ampersand was the hardest part, a little knot of ink that had to sit exactly between the two lines or the whole thing looked like a grievance. She made him redo it three times, and she paid for every attempt.

So when you're warming your hands tonight, look at the flames and think on what you'd walk into the cold for. Now, who wants the last of the mulled cider? Mind the cup, it's hot enough to remember.