Fine line black tattoo on the side of a thigh showing a stack of three books with the words I've lived a thousand lives above them.

Stack of books and quote on thigh

Fine line · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A small black outline drawing of a stack of three books sits on the outer side of a thigh, with the words "I've lived a thousand lives" written in a thin, plain typeface above it. The linework is fine and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black against the skin. The composition is centred on the tattoo, with dark clothing at the top edge of the frame and a carpeted floor visible in the background.

Fine line Lettering Thigh Book Quote Text Stack of books

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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

Nell counted the books twice before the gates opened, the way her father had taught her to count tent pegs. Three paperbacks, spines cracked, stacked on the tailboard of the book caravan at Hollis Field, and the rain holding off just long enough for the Tuesday crowd to drift past the Waltzer. She was twelve, and she had been told she could trade whatever she liked as long as the change tin balanced by dusk.

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The stall had been her gran's. Customers brought in a dog-eared thriller and left with something older. A man in a wax jacket swapped a field guide to birds for a book of sea shanties, and a girl with a bandage on one wrist asked for something with no ending yet. Nell gave her the one with a ribbon bookmark, not caring whether it was the right one, because Gran always said a book finds its reader the way a cat finds the warm chair.

Late in the afternoon the lights came on and the steps of the caravan creaked under a stranger, an old man with a brass-cornered suitcase. He said he had read every book on the shelves and wanted the one nobody had read. Nell showed him the crate under the bunk, where Gran kept the volumes that came in without covers. He opened the top one, found the first page blank except for a line in pencil, To whoever keeps the stack straight, and laughed so hard he had to sit down on the step. He paid in buttons and was gone before the rain.

That night Nell balanced the tin and then, because Gran always did, placed a fourth book on the pile, its spine bare, and wrote her own name on the flyleaf in pencil. Outside, the fair was packing itself into lorries, and she turned out the lamp and listened to it go.