Thanks to Jack Applin for sending this in, and starting the debate on tattoo strategy!
As Jack suggests, and the CIDU team agrees, there has to be a mistake and the word “tattooed” should be outside the quotation marks. Still, that leaves a lot of text to fit. ”Also, ‘hands’, plural? Does he want the phrase duplicated on each hand, or two words on one hand, and the rest on the other?” The companion’s remark about fingers suggests the “Night of the Hunter” strategy…
P.S. For more examples of cinematic knuckle-tattooing, see this Guardian bit.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Why can’t a word or words be split between the hands?
In advertising (just happened on it)
In an episode of The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob is working out in a prison gym; among his prison tats he has his knuckles tattooed with “LUV” and “HĀT”
Just a personal opinion/preference/peeve: the concept of loving an inanimate object such as a mug of coffee, however delicious that beverage might be, is an example of linguistic dilution of the sort that has destroyed words like amazing and fantastic, leaving us no succinct way to express what those words literally mean. Don’t get me started on incredible, to which my stock response is “I don’t believe you!” or “I don’t believe it either.”
@ootenaboot: That’s a truly awesome comment!
If I had been asked (before seeing this thread) to identify a canonical example of knuckle tattoo wearers, I would have selected Joliet Jake and Elwood J. Blues.
@ootenaboot: Are you saying that I don’t actually love the java jive? But does it love me?
Me too, Kilby.
Kilby- now their theme song is running in my head – thanks.
And the way life seems to work – Robert will probably run “The Blues Brothers” for next week’s “Friday Night Midnight Movie on TV”. (Same will be followed the following night by “Saturday Night Movie Date on TV” which is followed by searching all over for what movies will be watched the following week, as well as online posts of people traveling in their RVs. (After his second or third RV short I decide it time to go to the bathroom and after same I “forget” to return to the living room.)
In case anyone was wondering (I am pretty sure not, but just in case) he did not pick “The Blues Brothers” – he picked “Quackser Fortune has an Uncle in the Bronx” for Friday midnight movie.