I always felt that I was walking a tightrope with a noose around my neck.

A leash is a rope with a noose at both ends.

Everybody is on a leash. Some are more obvious than others.

Q: I have read that you also, at least sometimes, had a chain around your neck, and you were tied to a tree?

You know why I'm pulling your leg? Because I can't touch it from where I am.

you dangle on the leash of your own longing;
your need grows teeth

Who does not move, does not feel his chains.

Wer sich nicht bewegt, der spürt seine Fesseln nicht.

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away

She gave the impression that she had somehow slipped off her leash. As though she was taking herself for a walk while the rest of us were being walked – like pets.

I'm not 25, and I'm not 5'8". But I know when someone is pulling my leg.

Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go to Ireland, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly.

The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck.

Necks hate to exercise.
If necks were feet,
You’d never go anywhere.

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.