I choose this story above all others because it's a story I'm struggling to end.

When my friend Melot set the trap, I think I knew it. I turned to death full face, as I had turned to love with my whole body. I would let death enter me as you had entered me. You had crept along my blood vessels through the wound, and the blood that circulates returns to the heart. You circulated me, you made me blush like a girl in the hoop of your hands. You were in my arteries and my lymph, you were the colour just under my skin, and if I cut myself, it was you I bled. Red Isolde, alive on my fingers, and always the force of blood pushing you back to my heart.

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do now know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I’ll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on.

You know every cell in our bodies is completely renewed every seven years, so how can we talk about being the same person? We're absolutely not.

Always in my books, I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens.

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

You were in my arms for the first time, and you said my name, 'Tristan.' I answered you: 'Isolde.' Isolde. The world became a word.