Before tattoos were as common as they are today, I promised myself that when I turned 40, I'd get a tattoo. Forty came and went, and another promise was broken. Why did I renege? One reason was squeamishness - I couldn't bear the thought of having my skin injected with ink. The second reason was that I couldn't think of a good enough image to etch permanently on my body. A butterfly? A flower? A skull? Trite, trite, trite.

 Now that everyone has multiple tats, finding an original design is even more difficult. But fashion always finds a way to be new and different. Here is an entire website devoted to literary tattoos, and it isn't the only one.

Popular images include literary quotations, characters from literature, and author portraits. Now I find myself thinking again, if I were to get a tattoo, what would it be? A simple book, perhaps. Or a pair of glasses.  The one of Hemingway's typewriter that reminds us of his advice for writers: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Maybe this one, a quotation from To Kill a Mockingbird: "Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."

All images from the website www.contrariwise.org, all rights reserved.