Tattoo Artist Quotes

This is so cool," I said loudly as Dad walked away. "Have you met the tattoo artist? Is he hot?" "He's a she," Mom said. "Is she hot? Cause I'm still young, you know. My sexual identity isnt fully formed." "Your father can't hear you anymore, Maya." Mom sighed. ~ Kelley Armstrong

After Cannes every year, I end up going to some foreign country I've never been to before and introducing myself to a new religion - I'll go to Bali and research Hinduism, or I'll go to Thailand and get another tattoo from Thai tattoo artist Ajarn Noo Kanpai. ~ Michelle Rodriguez

I'm not a cop. I'm just a tattoo artist. I'm just a guy who used to be in love with a girl. I'm just a fool who's been fooled too many times before. I'm just a man who's finally getting his revenge. ~ Karina Halle

Some of the pain that clients experience is likely from not knowing what to expect. They approach their appointment with tension and nervousness, and they tend to hold their breath when they first get started. As soon as a client relaxes and breathes normally, the tattoo pain becomes minimal. ~ Shelly Dax

Tattooing, when understood in its entirety, must be seen as a religious act. The human being brings forth images from the center of the self and communicates them to the world. Fantasy is embodied in reality and the person is made whole. ~ Spider Webb

The tattoo artist inflicts pain and I take it. With each breath I count to one again. Each inhale, each exhale, time passes in the smallest of pieces, and pieces still smaller than those.
This is how you count a life. This is how you go through it. Each second of hurt is a second that's already passed, one you never have to go through again. I have counted in pieces that small, when walking from the bed to the fridge seemed an insurmountable goal. I have counted my breaths, my steps, my eye-blinks, my hiccups, the tiny pulse in my thumb. And when I started getting tattooed, two of the things I used to need were gone: to write on myself, and to find irrelevant things to count. A second of intense pain is the most profound thing you can live through. And another, and another, and another, and then you know what it is to feel, and to struggle through that feeling one small agonizing increment at a time, and if you know that, you know what it is to live with mental illness. ~ Stacy Pershall

Unscripted, unedited, and wholly authentic people are almost universally admired, especially if they have flaws, are not afraid to make live, red-blooded mistakes, and rather than trying are busy simply being. Which is something you should consider hiring a tattoo artist to script across the palm of your hand: Be, Don't Try. "Oh my God, I can't do that. I would totally mess up." You better pray to the corn god that you do. Messing up is how you tell other people, "It's okay to like me, because I'm just like you." Everybody feels a bit like a dented can inside. Even the slickest, most polished person you can think of is more aware of their shortcomings and flaws than their talents and gifts. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I really enjoy touring period! I had another band called Killing Machine, we went out on tour which was only fifteen shows & we went out in a really old motor home. That had to be the most fun. I didn't have to do radio at nine in the morning everyday. It was me & a bunch of friends. The singer was my tattoo artist. My girlfriend would fly in & we would sleep in a hammock above the bed the band were sleeping in [laughs]. I like that stuff that's really fun, I like the camping experience. ~ Tracii Guns

The greatness of the tattoo artist lies in her ability to gauge the degree to which she can push her art before the art kills the canvas. ~ Jill Ciment

His anger seemed out of proportion to the crime. Men. Give them an orgasm and they want ... well, probably more orgasms. ~ Kate Meader

Memory, all-night's bedside tattoo artist. ~ Charles Simic

There is something in the act of having tattoos done that I love. It can be quite addictive. I've got a few on my back because my friend is an artist, and a few on my arms. Every time I pass a tattoo parlour, I think, 'Maybe just a tiny one.' ~ Lena Headey

Try telling the boy who's just had his girlfriend's name
cut into his arm that there's slippage between the signifier
and the signified. Or better yet explain to the girl
who watched in the mirror as the tattoo artist stitched
the word for her father's name (on earth as in heaven)
across her back that words aren't made of flesh and blood,
that they don't bite the skin. Language is the animal
we've trained to pick up the scent of meaning. It's why
when the boy hears his father yelling at the door
he sends the dog that he's kept hungry, that he's kicked,
then loved, to attack the man, to show him that every word
has a consequence, that language, when used right, hurts. ~ Todd Davis

I'm not Jet so I can't write you a song that makes you understand how important you are to me. I'm not Nash so I can't find a building and paint you a mural that makes see that it all starts and ends with you for me. I'm a tattoo artist, I'll probably always be a tattoo artist ( ... ) Here's my heart Shaw. You have it in your hands
and I promise you're the first and last person to ever touch it. You need to
be careful with it because it's far more fragile than I ever thought and if you try and give it back I'm not taking it. ~ Jay Crownover

See . . . um . . . the thing is, I met with Lisa a few days ago. She wanted to apologize for . . . Halloween, and not calling . . .

Thing is, her previous story . . . um . . . She wanted me to read it. She . . . wanted to explain her issues. She was jealous . . . of you and me becoming friends and . . . kinda lost it, I guess.

My point is, um . . . she used the story to put it into words . . .

I think she is writing messages. . . to you. ~ Stjepan Sejic

This is so cool," I said as Dad walked away. "Have you met the tattoo artist? Is he hot?
"He's a she," Mom said.
"Is she hot? Cause I'm still young, you know. My sexual identity isn't fully formed. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Find 'em hot, leave 'em wet," he murmured.
"Well known firefighter maxim. ~ Kate Meader

You know that I immerse myself in music, so to speak - that I think about it all day long - that I like experimenting - studying - reflecting. ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That's the feeling.
(T.E. Lawrence to artist Eric Kennington, May 1935 ) ~ T.E. Lawrence

To maximize what you get out of your college experience, I want your friends to look at your semester schedule and say "this is the weirdest schedule I've ever seen!"
Trust me on this one. If you want to be an engineer, take Engineering 101, and a crash course in philosophical literature. then take Engineering 102, and art appreciation. then Engineering 103, and Intro to Women's Rights.
You will expand your knowledge and ways of looking at the world, and become a more powerful person for it. Because that way, when you encounter difficulties, you won't only tackle the problem from the point of view of an engineer. Anybody can do that. You will be able to look at it as a scientist, a philosopher, an artist, and choose the best course of action from there. ~ Anonymous

How is it that Christians today will pay $20 to hear the latest Christian artist in concert, but Jesus can't draw a crowd? ~ Jim Cymbala

I'm always composing and trying to learn more about the business. In today's market, it's more important than ever to be self-sufficient as an artist. I am in law school and that has helped me in so many ways. It's cool to know what I'm signing and I hope to be able to advise other artists. ~ Antoniette Costa

The Kirtaniyas are in the new wave of younger Kirtan artists bringing
the divine practice of Bhakti from the ancient to the modern world.
With fierce drumming and passionate singing they light up everyone
around them and spread the deep joy of God's names. An evening with
the Kirtaniyas will never be forgotten! ~ Jai Uttal

I hope someone thinks I sing good. I'm always working hard to sing better. I sound the way I sound, but I can always be better. I work hard at singing and being a better recording artist. ~ Luke Bryan

Americans ... do not naturally apply the term "bourgeois" to themselves, or to anyone else for that matter. They do like to call themselves middle class, but that does not carry with it any determinate spiritual content ... The term "middle class" does not have any of the many opposites that bourgeois has, such as aristocrat, saint, hero, or artist all good. ~ Allan Bloom

The idea of a talent that was bigger than an artist's ability to choose to use it, that would dictate the artist's life more than the artist could dictate, was interesting to me. ~ Alexander Chee

I can draw really well. And I like to paint. I'm a bit of an artist. ~ Zac Efron

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. ~ Jackson Pollock

I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

You have a strange relationship with calamity when you're a writer: you write about it; as an artist, you objectify and fetishize it. You render life into material, and that's a creepy thing to do. ~ Tony Kushner

I set my sights upon becoming the kind of artist who would make a contribution to art history. ~ Judy Chicago

Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine, wouldn't you? ~ Andy Warhol

The eager or dutiful persons who subject themselves to these tidal waves of the classics and the moderns find everything wonderful in an absent-minded way. The wonder washes over them rather than into them, and one of its effects is to make anything shocking or odd suddenly interesting enough to gain a month's celebrity. And so another by-product of our come-one, come-all policy is the tendency to reward cleverness, not art, and to put one more hurdle in the path of the truly original artist. ~ Jacques Barzun

Individuality, conceived as a temporal development involves uncertainty, indeterminacy, or contingency. Individuality is the source of whatever is unpredictable in the world....genuine time, if it exists as anything else except the measure of motions in space, is all one with the existence of individuals as individuals, with the creative, with the occurrence of unpredictable novelties. Everything that can be said contrary to this conclusion is but a reminder that an individual may lose his individuality, for individuals become imprisoned in routine and fall to the level of mechanisms. Genuine time then ceases to be an integral element of their being. Our behavior becomes predictable, because it is but an external rearrangement of what went before....surrender of individuality by the many to someone who is taken to be a superindividual explains the retrograde movement of society. Dictatorships and totalitarian states, and belief in the inevitability of this or that result coming to pass are, strange as it may sound, ways of denying the reality of time and the creativeness of the individual....the artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does vi ~ John Dewey

Female artists I love the most are Fiona Apple, Paramour and Regina Spektor - those girls that really write amazing songs themselves, and they're younger and cool. I'm not quite sure I could ever write songs like any of them, but if I could, I would. ~ Jennifer Damiano

If I decide to get a tattoo, it'll be a map of where I live on my chest in case I ever get amnesia. ~ Stewart Stafford

In many ways an artist is his work. It's difficult to separate the two. I think I can be brutally objective about my work as I create it, and if something doesn't work, I can feel it, but when I turn in a finished album - or song - you can be sure that I've given it every ounce of energy and God-given talent that I have. ~ Michael Jackson

Even though I grew up as a Sephardic Jew in Brooklyn where we ate Syrian food and went to temple, it was still America. ~ Isaac Mizrahi

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it. ~ Rachel Field

I went to Princeton High School, when I was very serious about being an artist. I was in a theatre family but I didn't want to become an actor. ~ John Lithgow

Many artists in Mexico fight to be the Latina Madonna. I don't want that! Never! Maybe she's the American Gloria Trevi! ~ Gloria Trevi

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood. ~ Alice Walker

I was one of two first cultural exchange artists been allowed to go to the West. I knew it was such a rare opportunity and I had to treasure it by giving my utter most to achieve excellence. ~ Li Cunxin

I am not a natural singer, but I can sing, and probably the way I sing is more imitative than from myself, which is why I am never going to be an amazing recording artist. ~ Tim Blake Nelson

As if the aim of a beautiful view is to create a great artist or to make the lonely to forget his loneliness or just to create a great ease in the tired minds of every creature! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

In the cycle of a great civilization, the artist begins as priest, and ends as a clown or buffoon. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy. ~ Oscar Wilde

I think being an artist, or just being creative, or imaginative, or aware, where I think everybody starts out, and by about the age of 10, that's been pretty effectively whipped out by education. ~ William Wiley

Solitude gives us time to master our creative instincts. ~ Avijeet Das

The artist treats intuition and nuance with respect and reminds us that a little madness resides in all of us. Artists give voice to feelings, to conflict, to the prism of human experience. ~ Peter Block

An artist is someone with the gift to light up a dark room. ~ Eric Cantona