" To tattoo was to understand that people in all their confusing mystery wanted only to claim their bodies as their own site, on which to build a beacon, or raise a rafter, or nail up a manifesto, warning, celebrating, telling of themselves. It was to understand that in order for a body to be reborn and re-yoked, first it needed to be destroyed and freed. It was emancipation and it was slavery, the ashes and the phoenix. It was beauty and destruction, it was that old trick. That was the contract. "

― Sarah Hall , The Electric Michelangelo