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.

I keep myself locked as a box when it matters, and broken open when it doesn't matter at all.

You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?

Life was a pre-death experience.

There's a whole generation growing up thinking you shouldn't seek knowledge for its own sake, and that theatre and art and books are activities that you do after-hours, rather than things that are at the heart of life. That's a huge change.

The poet will not be satisfied with recording, the poet will have to transform.

Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.