Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.

The President of Portugal appointed him the title Do Infante Dom Henrique in 1989 and that same year the French government named him a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. His first important novel Indian Nocturne was publiAntonio Tabucchid in 1984 and became the basis of a 1989 a film directed by Alain Corneau. Poetiche a posteriori (2003) ISBN 88-07-42098-8
Tristano muore.

In later life he was mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature a feat he never achieved. He was so charmed that back in Italy he attended a course of Portuguese language for a better comprehension of the poet.