Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Leonard Cohen, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Leonard Cohen quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 347 Leonard Cohen quotes for you to read and share.
Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly. -- Leonard Cohen
How quickly pettiness returns, and that most ignoble form of real estate, the possessive occupation and tyranny over two square inches of human flesh, the wife's cunt. -- Leonard Cohen
I loved you for a long, long time
I know this love is real
It don't matter how it all went wrong
That don't change the way I feel
And I can't believe that time's
Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of
There ain't no cure for love -- Leonard Cohen
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / Thats how it goes / Everybody knows. -- Leonard Cohen
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths. -- Leonard Cohen
We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey. -- Leonard Cohen
I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet. -- Leonard Cohen
We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what? -- Leonard Cohen
And may my bronze name / touch always her thousand fingers / grow brighter with her weeping / until I am fixed like a galaxy / and memorized / in her secret and fragile skies. -- Leonard Cohen
[S]ongs must be measured by their utility. Any jaunty little tune that can get you from one point to another as you drive, or get you through the dishes, or that can illuminate or dignify your courting, I always appreciate.
-interview, 1995 -- Leonard Cohen
He knew that hair couldn't feel; he kissed her hair. -- Leonard Cohen
Dear friend, I have searched all night
through each burnt paper,
but I fear I will never find
the formula to let you die -- Leonard Cohen
And sometimes when the night is slow The wretched and the meek We gather up our hearts and go A Thousand Kisses Deep. -- Leonard Cohen
So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed
It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far. -- Leonard Cohen
you know that I love/ to live with you/ but you make me forget so very much/ we forget to pray for the angels/ and then the angels forget to pray for us/ -- Leonard Cohen
May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude. -- Leonard Cohen
And clenching your fist for the ones like us Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty. -- Leonard Cohen
Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness. -- Leonard Cohen
Growing old becomes clear to you at a certain point. I think it's after the age of 70 you realize - you begin to actually be convinced - you're growing older. -- Leonard Cohen
Ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars -- Leonard Cohen
I don't remember
lighting this cigarette
and I don't remember
if I'm here alone
or waiting for someone. -- Leonard Cohen
Though I love your company, your instructions are wasted her. I will always choose the woman who caries me off, I will always sit with the family of loneliness. -- Leonard Cohen
I'm old and the mirrors don't lie. -- Leonard Cohen
Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind. -- Leonard Cohen
This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have the sense that we can't live without love. That life has very little meaning without love. -- Leonard Cohen
I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I'm just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep. -- Leonard Cohen
Pigskin crackling on my thumb, nummy nummy I hate pain. -- Leonard Cohen
It's a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too. -- Leonard Cohen
It's like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it. -- Leonard Cohen
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it. -- Leonard Cohen
As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty. -- Leonard Cohen
Love is not a victory march -- Leonard Cohen
To the men and women who own men and women
those of us meant to be lovers
we will not pardon you
for wasting our bodies and time -- Leonard Cohen
I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk. -- Leonard Cohen
I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. -- Leonard Cohen
Now Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
on our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers -- Leonard Cohen
In Montreal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, the winter has not killed us again! -- Leonard Cohen
To discover the truth in anything that is alien, first dispense with the indispensable in your own vision. -- Leonard Cohen
Like any joker, he was watching For the card that is so high and wild He'll never need to deal another He was just some Joseph looking for a manger -- Leonard Cohen
You go your way
I'll go your way too -- Leonard Cohen
There's no forsaking what you love
no existential leap
as witnessed here in time and blood
a thousand kisses deep -- Leonard Cohen
I didn't fall in love of course it's never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through -- Leonard Cohen
If only my genitals didn't float
When I relaxed in the bath
And we both looked down and we both agreed
It's stupid to be a man -- Leonard Cohen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. -- Leonard Cohen
How may we be saints and live in golden coffins
Who will leave on our stone shelves
pathetic notes for intervention
How may we be calm marble gods at ocean altars
Who will murder us for some high reason -- Leonard Cohen
If I spelled out the Principles of Faith
I would be barking on the moon. -- Leonard Cohen
I don't ask for information that I probably wouldn't be able to process even if it were granted to me.
--Aug 2016 interview, when asked what might be in store for us after the big sunset -- Leonard Cohen
You have money, fame, youth, beauty, talent. That's a good start ... for feeling good. -- Leonard Cohen
If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask.
If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask.
If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand.
If you want a partner in life take my hand.
I'm your man. -- Leonard Cohen
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm -- Leonard Cohen
Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and earth with a word. -- Leonard Cohen
I smile when I'm angry , I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right , and I'd die for the truth in my secret life . -- Leonard Cohen
Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else.
Then let's be quiet together. -- Leonard Cohen
Like a bird on a wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free!! -- Leonard Cohen
Shouldering your loneliness like a gun that you will not learn to aim, you stumble into this movie house then you climb, you climb into the frame. -- Leonard Cohen
Well it's true, ever since I stopped eating meat I feel a lot better among animals, I feel I can be much more honest when I pat a dog. -- Leonard Cohen
After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover. -- Leonard Cohen
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul ... -- Leonard Cohen
The candles burned The moon went down The polished hill The milky town Transparent, weightless, luminous Uncovering the two of us On that fundamental ground Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound And half the perfect world is found. -- Leonard Cohen
Listen to a name so private it can burn hear it said aloud and learn and learn History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison of all they want to keep Now -- Leonard Cohen
My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs. -- Leonard Cohen
I would like to remind the management that the drinks are watered and the hat-check girl has syphilis and the band is composed of former ss monsters However since it is new year's eve and i have lip cancer i will place my paper hat on my concussion and dance -- Leonard Cohen
I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face. -- Leonard Cohen
Everytime you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory -- Leonard Cohen
The first star tonight insanely high, virgin, calm.
I have one hour of peace before the documented planets burn me down. -- Leonard Cohen
I'm not looking for another
As I wander in my time -- Leonard Cohen
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin -- Leonard Cohen
It's a pity if someone ... has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart's ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it. -- Leonard Cohen
The moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief. -- Leonard Cohen
Do not be a magician - be magic! -- Leonard Cohen
Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation. -- Leonard Cohen
And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer, what can I possibly say? I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you, I'm glad you stood in my way -- Leonard Cohen
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi -- Leonard Cohen
In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me ...
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance. -- Leonard Cohen
The Remote
I often think about you
when I'm lying alone in
my room with my mouth
open and the remote
lost somewhere in the bed. -- Leonard Cohen
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover -- Leonard Cohen
When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself. -- Leonard Cohen
Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered. -- Leonard Cohen
Dear Hitler
Take away the torches I'm not guilty I had to have this -- Leonard Cohen
Believe nothing of me
except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own. -- Leonard Cohen
A fresh spiderweb
billowing
like a spinnaker
across the open window
and here he is
the little master
sailing by
on a thread of milk
wish me luck
admiral
I haven't finished anything
in a long time -- Leonard Cohen
Maybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you. -- Leonard Cohen
When passion dies
friendship hovers round our flesh like flies -- Leonard Cohen
One is distracted by this notion that there is such an thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I'm not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff to come up with my payload -- Leonard Cohen
I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.
If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb stairs
and clear his throat outside our door. -- Leonard Cohen
The most precious secret has been leaked:
There is no Opposition! -- Leonard Cohen
Hallelujah"
"Your faith was strong but you needed proof.
You saw her bathing on the roof.
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.
She tied you to a kitchen chair,
she broke your throne, and she cut your hair.
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah ... -- Leonard Cohen
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation - none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy. -- Leonard Cohen
His vision was just outstanding. If you think of him in the same way as Pele then you would come close. -- Leonard Cohen
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender -- Leonard Cohen
I'm neither left or right. I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen. -- Leonard Cohen
What were the bodies like on the beach? Ugly and white and ruined by offices. -- Leonard Cohen
I am not the one who loves -
It's love that chooses me. -- Leonard Cohen
In the broken places, the light shines through. -- Leonard Cohen
I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you -- Leonard Cohen
You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen, you were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline. -- Leonard Cohen
Music is the emotional life of most people. -- Leonard Cohen
The troubles came and I saved what I could save. A thread of light, a particle, a wave. -- Leonard Cohen
I've seen the future and it's murder. -- Leonard Cohen
The dreamers ride against the men of action. Oh see the men of action falling back. -- Leonard Cohen
So I must say it quickly;
Whoever is in your life,
those that harm you,
those that help you;
those whom you know
and those whom you do not know --
let them off the hook,
help them off the hook.
Recognize the hook.
You are listening to radio resistance. -- Leonard Cohen
And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either. -- Leonard Cohen
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world. -- Leonard Cohen
No penance serves to renew them, no massive transfusions of trust. Why not even revenge can undo them, so twisted these vows and so crushed. -- Leonard Cohen
I'm blackening pages, but I don't know if it's writing. -- Leonard Cohen
The silver knives are flashing in that tired old cafe ... -- Leonard Cohen
We sold ourselves for love but now we are free
I'm so sorry for that ghost I made you be
Only one of us was real and that was me -- Leonard Cohen
Pay attention to the cracks, because that's where the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen
We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup. -- Leonard Cohen
I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitoes. -- Leonard Cohen
I alwaysthought of myself as a competent, minor poet. I know who I'm up against. -- Leonard Cohen
I don't want to be a star, merely dying. -- Leonard Cohen
A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then it's time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I'm wanted at the traffic-jam. They're saving me a seat. -- Leonard Cohen
You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children , you must not do it anymore. A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god . -- Leonard Cohen
It's you my love, you who are the stranger. -- Leonard Cohen
Well I am the one who loves changing from nothing to one. -- Leonard Cohen
We've got to learn to love appearances. -- Leonard Cohen
Does anybody have a cigarette? I'm looking forward to that first smoke. I've been looking forward to [it] for about 30 years. -- Leonard Cohen
String Reprise / Treaty
I wish there was a treaty we could sign
It's over now, the water and the wine
We were broken then but now we're borderline
And I wish there was a treaty,
I wish there was a treaty between your love and mine -- Leonard Cohen
I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere. -- Leonard Cohen
We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear. -- Leonard Cohen
First of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again -- Leonard Cohen
I dreamed about you baby. It was just the other night. Most of you was naked Ah, but some of you was light. -- Leonard Cohen
Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach. -- Leonard Cohen
Never make a decision when you need to pee. -- Leonard Cohen
A rat is more alive than a turtle.
A turtle is slow, cold, mechanical, nearly a toy, a shell with legs. Their deaths didn't count. But a white rat is quick and warm in its envelope of skin -- Leonard Cohen
Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process. -- Leonard Cohen
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple -- Leonard Cohen
Then I start to struggle
With a feeble song
Which will overcome me
Many miles from home -- Leonard Cohen
I raise my glass to the Awful Truth,
Which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth,
Except to say it isn't worth a dime,
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice,
And it's once for the Devil and once for Christ -- Leonard Cohen
I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee. -- Leonard Cohen
Sexuality is general, and although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warm. That's the great generosity of women and the great generosity of the creator who worked it out that way, that there are no unilateral agreements of sexuality. -- Leonard Cohen
What a beautiful testament to the creative spirit and its true motives, to creative contribution coming from a place of purpose rather than a hunger for profit. -- Leonard Cohen
A teacher I once had told me that the older you get, the lonelier you become and the deeper the love you need. Loneliness creates an appetite for deeper love, and the entire predicament deepens. And as a result of suffering, your capacity to love deeply increases. -- Leonard Cohen
I have nothing against the Queen of England. Even in my heart I never resented her for not being Jackie Kennedy. She is, to my mind, a very gallant lady, victimized by whoever it is who designs the tops of her uniforms. -- Leonard Cohen
I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end. -- Leonard Cohen
I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart -- Leonard Cohen
BREAVMAN KNOWS a girl named Shell whose ears were pierced so she could wear the long filigree earrings. The punctures festered and now she has a tiny scar in each earlobe. He discovered them behind her hair. -- Leonard Cohen
Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder. -- Leonard Cohen
I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse. -- Leonard Cohen
Everything has a crack in it; that's how the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen
Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing. -- Leonard Cohen
You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew who wrote the Bible.
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival. -- Leonard Cohen
From bitter searching of the heart,
quickened with passion and with pain
we rise
to play a greater part
this is the faith from which we start. -- Leonard Cohen
I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive. -- Leonard Cohen
The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come. -- Leonard Cohen
Catherine Tekakwitha, who are you? Are you (1656-1680)? Is that enough? Are you the Iroquois Virgin? Are you the Lily of the Shores of the Mohawk River? Can I love you in my own way? -- Leonard Cohen
Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace. -- Leonard Cohen
A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love ... -- Leonard Cohen
I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it. -- Leonard Cohen
GIFT
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me -- Leonard Cohen
G-d is alive. Magic is afoot. G-d is afoot. Magic is alive. -- Leonard Cohen
The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape. -- Leonard Cohen
I have often prayed for you like this Let me have her -- Leonard Cohen
I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events. -- Leonard Cohen
Poetry is a verdict rather than an intention. -- Leonard Cohen
Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore -- Leonard Cohen
The less I was of who I was, the better I felt. -- Leonard Cohen
I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book. -- Leonard Cohen
You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself. -- Leonard Cohen
The Dream" "O I had such a wonderful dream, she said. I dreamed you made love to me. At last, he said to himself, the spirit has taken up some of the heavy work. -- Leonard Cohen
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night pencilled in -- Leonard Cohen
Do not believe the truth. The truth is tiny compared to what you have to do. -- Leonard Cohen
Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached. -- Leonard Cohen
Love me this first day of June.
I'd rather sleep with ashes than priestly wisdom.
Of all the lonely places in the world this is best where debris is human.
I kiss the precious ashes that fall from fiery flesh.
On these familiar shapes I lay my kisses down. -- Leonard Cohen
Forget the perfect offering. Everything is flawed. It's the cracks that let the Light in ... -- Leonard Cohen
This was your heart
This swarm of flies
This was once your mouth
This bowl of lies
You serve them well
I'm not surprised
You're of their kin
You're of their kind -- Leonard Cohen
I didn't kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn't turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn't sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me -- Leonard Cohen
You should go from place to place recovering the poems that have been written for you to which you can affix your signature. Don't discuss these matters with anyone. Retrieve. Retrieve. When the basket is full someone will appear to whom you can present it. -- Leonard Cohen
To kiss her there was to intrude into something private and skeletal, like a turtle's shoulder. -- Leonard Cohen
[Europe has] this tradition of self revelation in popular music. We have it here - it's called Country Western Music ... I think that's where the deeper and more complex subjects are treated. -- Leonard Cohen
History is a needle
for putting men asleep
anointed with the poison
Of all they want to keep. -- Leonard Cohen
I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. -- Leonard Cohen
Only one thing made him happy and now that it was gone everything made him happy. -- Leonard Cohen
A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love. -- Leonard Cohen
My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in places I used to play.
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on.
I'm just paying my rent every day in the tower of song. -- Leonard Cohen
Take one step to the side and it's all absurd. -- Leonard Cohen
I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin. -- Leonard Cohen
War is wonderful. They'll never stamp it out. It's one of the few times people can act their best. It's so economical in terms of gesture and motion, every single gesture is precise, every effort is at its maximum. Nobody goofs off. Everybody is responsible for his brother. -- Leonard Cohen
You came to me this morning
And you handled me like meat
You'd have to be a man to know
How good that feels, how sweet -- Leonard Cohen
It's four in the morning, the end of december
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better. -- Leonard Cohen
He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love. -- Leonard Cohen
When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. -- Leonard Cohen
A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love. -- Leonard Cohen
I don't know which side is anybody on any more. I don't really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we're on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order. -- Leonard Cohen
I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write. -- Leonard Cohen
I'll be marching through the morning,
Marching through the night,
Moving 'cross the borders
Of My Secret Life. -- Leonard Cohen
You can say that I've grown bitter but of this you can be sure. The rich have get their channels in the bedrooms of the poor. And there's a mighty Judgement coming but I may be wrong ... -- Leonard Cohen
Dearest Shell,
If you let me I'd always keep you 400 miles away and write you pretty poems and letters ... I'm afraid to live anywhere but in expectation. -- Leonard Cohen
Who could have foretold
the heart grows old
from touching others -- Leonard Cohen
There's a blaze of light in every word. It doesn't matter which you heard. The holy or the broken hallelujah. -- Leonard Cohen
Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy, useless light behind the terror, deathless song in the house of night. -- Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows the dice are loaded. -- Leonard Cohen
The winter has not killed usagain! -- Leonard Cohen
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder -- Leonard Cohen
Lets sing another song, boys/ this one has grown old and bitter. -- Leonard Cohen
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you. -- Leonard Cohen
I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece. -- Leonard Cohen
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty . -- Leonard Cohen
I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations. -- Leonard Cohen
My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character. -- Leonard Cohen
How bitter were
the Prozac pills
of the last
few hundred mornings -- Leonard Cohen
I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words. -- Leonard Cohen
I am not the one who loved, it's love that chooses me.
When hatred with it's package comes, you forbid delivery. -- Leonard Cohen
Don't call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it. -- Leonard Cohen
We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity. -- Leonard Cohen
A young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity. -- Leonard Cohen
I don't trust my inner feelings, inner feelings come and go. -- Leonard Cohen
May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And my love, Goodbye. -- Leonard Cohen
Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you. -- Leonard Cohen
it's closing time -- Leonard Cohen
Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time. -- Leonard Cohen
I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is. -- Leonard Cohen
As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. -- Leonard Cohen
Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee -- Leonard Cohen
I walk through the old yellow sunlight
to get to my kitchen table
the poem about me
lying there with the books
in which I am listed
among the dead and future Dylans -- Leonard Cohen
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use. -- Leonard Cohen
I want history to jump on Canada's spine with sharp skates. -- Leonard Cohen
Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. -- Leonard Cohen
My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone. -- Leonard Cohen
Coroner's inquest: death by drowning. And he hasn't been to the sea-shore in ten years. -- Leonard Cohen
You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes one kind. -- Leonard Cohen
I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune. -- Leonard Cohen
It's the notion that there is no perfection - that this is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still that is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances. -- Leonard Cohen
I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life. -- Leonard Cohen
The birds they sangat the break of day.Start again!!I heard them say -- Leonard Cohen
When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must , I will help you if I can. When it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can. -- Leonard Cohen
In our rags of light, all dressed to kill. -- Leonard Cohen
He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire. -- Leonard Cohen
There are no letters in the mailbox
And there are no grapes upon the vine
And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore
And there are no diamonds in the mine -- Leonard Cohen
His knowledge of ancient Greece was based entirely on a poem Edgar Allan Poe, a few homosexual encounters with restaurateurs (he ate free at almost every soda fountain in the city), and a plaster reproduction of the Akropolis which, for some reason, he had coated with red nail polish. -- Leonard Cohen
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of Dance me to the end of love -- Leonard Cohen
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love -- Leonard Cohen
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem. -- Leonard Cohen
Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms -- Leonard Cohen
Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. -- Leonard Cohen
Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don't know what to say. -- Leonard Cohen
Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five! -- Leonard Cohen
I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly. -- Leonard Cohen
It is painful to recall a past intensity, to estimate your distance from the Belsen heap, to make your peace with numbers. Just to get up each morning is to make a kind of peace. -- Leonard Cohen
Success is survival. -- Leonard Cohen
I have tried in my way to be free. -- Leonard Cohen
To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself. -- Leonard Cohen
When you've fallen on the highway / and you're lying in the rain, / and they ask you how you're doing / of course you'll say you can't complain ... -- Leonard Cohen
I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability. -- Leonard Cohen
It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. -- Leonard Cohen
All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them -- Leonard Cohen
I will starve till prophets find me,
I will bleed till angels bind me,
Still I sing till churches blind me,
Still I love till cog-wheels wind me. -- Leonard Cohen
The day wasn't exactly my own
since I checked
and found it on a public calendar.
Tripping over many pairs of legs
as I walked down the park
I also learned my lust
was not so rare a masterpiece. -- Leonard Cohen
I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world. -- Leonard Cohen
Games are nature's most beautiful creation -- Leonard Cohen
Silence And a deeper silence When the crickets Hesitate -- Leonard Cohen
Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care -- Leonard Cohen
It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway. -- Leonard Cohen
My animal howls
My angel's upset
But I'm not allowed
A trace of regret -- Leonard Cohen
I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog. -- Leonard Cohen
Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else. -- Leonard Cohen
There is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones[ ... ] When one looks at the world, there's only one thing to say, and it's hallelujah. That's the way it is. -- Leonard Cohen
You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal. -- Leonard Cohen
English, I know you ... you are German with a license to kill. -- Leonard Cohen
I'm planning a catastrophe. -- Leonard Cohen
Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was, Hallelujah. -- Leonard Cohen
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't. -- Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed,
Everybody knows that the war is over,
Everybody knows the good guys lost. -- Leonard Cohen
As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line. -- Leonard Cohen
The duty of lovers is to tarnish the Golden Rule -- Leonard Cohen
I showed my heart to the doctor/
He said I just had to quit -- Leonard Cohen
At first first nothing will happen to us
and later on
it will happen to us again. -- Leonard Cohen
If you're squeezed for information, / that's when you've got to play it dumb: / You just say you're out there waiting / for the miracle, for the miracle to come. -- Leonard Cohen
I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree. -- Leonard Cohen
Nobody goes into a Zen monastery as a tourist. -- Leonard Cohen
The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show. -- Leonard Cohen
Marita,
Please find me,
I am almost 30 -- Leonard Cohen
The wretched beast is tame I don't need a lover So blow out the flame... -- Leonard Cohen
She was made of flesh and eyelashes. -- Leonard Cohen
When he puts his mouth against her shoulder
she is uncertain whether her shoulder
has given or received the kiss.
All her flesh is like a mouth. -- Leonard Cohen
Ou wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent -- Leonard Cohen
You live your life as if it's real ... a thousand kisses deep -- Leonard Cohen
When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do. -- Leonard Cohen
And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart. -- Leonard Cohen
A poem has a certain - a different time. For instance, a poem is a very private experience, and it doesn't have a driving tempo. In other words, you know, you can go back and forward; you can comeback; you can linger. You know, it's a completely different time reference. -- Leonard Cohen
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned. -- Leonard Cohen
Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity. -- Leonard Cohen
Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession. -- Leonard Cohen
I couldn't feel so I learned to touch. -- Leonard Cohen
I will not be held like a drunkard / under the cold tap of facts -- Leonard Cohen
Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time. -- Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or two. -- Leonard Cohen
You go to Heaven once you've been to Hell -- Leonard Cohen
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. -- Leonard Cohen
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof... -- Leonard Cohen
The wars they will be fought again The holy dove be caught again bought and sold and bought again; the dove is never free. -- Leonard Cohen
And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion -- Leonard Cohen
There is a crack in everything -- Leonard Cohen
Deprivation is the mother of poetry. -- Leonard Cohen
Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering. -- Leonard Cohen
Ring the bells that still can ring. -- Leonard Cohen
Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true. -- Leonard Cohen
Ah, grief makes us precise! -- Leonard Cohen
Only in Canada could somebody with a voice like mine win 'Vocalist of the Year'. -- Leonard Cohen
How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me? -- Leonard Cohen
Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song. -- Leonard Cohen
Well, I've been waiting, I was sure
we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for
I think it's time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter -- Leonard Cohen
A heavy burden lifted from my soul,
I heard that love was out of my control. -- Leonard Cohen
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom ... for trying to change the system from within -- Leonard Cohen
we met when we were almost young -- Leonard Cohen
Here is your cross, Your nails and your hill; And here is your love, That lists where it will -- Leonard Cohen
I'm just waiting for the miracle to come -- Leonard Cohen
And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it's all built upon. -- Leonard Cohen
even damnation is poisoned with rainbows. -- Leonard Cohen
And summoned now
to deal with your invincible defeat
You live your life
As if it's real -- Leonard Cohen
The art of longing's over, and it's never coming back. -- Leonard Cohen
In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress. -- Leonard Cohen
One eye filled with blueprints
one eye filled with night -- Leonard Cohen
Sail on, sail on, o' might Ship of State. To the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate. Sail on, sail on, sail on. -- Leonard Cohen
Although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warmed. -- Leonard Cohen
I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together. -- Leonard Cohen
Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act. -- Leonard Cohen
You win a while, and then it's done - Your little winning streak. -- Leonard Cohen
All the lousy little poets coming around trying to sound like Charles Manson. -- Leonard Cohen
My abandoned narcotics have abandoned me. -- Leonard Cohen
We are ugly but we have the music. -- Leonard Cohen
I ache in the places where I used to play... -- Leonard Cohen
The sweetest little song:
You go your way
I'll go your way too! -- Leonard Cohen
I don't even hate books anymore. -- Leonard Cohen
A man never got a woman back ... not by begging on his knees. -- Leonard Cohen
You lose your grip, and then you slip into the Masterpiece. -- Leonard Cohen
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will -- Leonard Cohen
Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time -- Leonard Cohen
This mental space is occupied and everything is mine. -- Leonard Cohen
If you are the dealer
Let me out of the game
If you are the healer
I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory
Mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame -- Leonard Cohen
Love is the only engine of survival -- Leonard Cohen
...And everything depends upon how near you sleep to me. -- Leonard Cohen
Your body will never be familiar. -- Leonard Cohen
I listen to the radio and I like all kinds of music, you know, but I like to hear from people who have been there. Hank Williams has been there. -- Leonard Cohen
I want to be paid for my work, not work for my pay. -- Leonard Cohen
Music is the emotional life of the most people. -- Leonard Cohen
Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. -- Leonard Cohen
If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often. -- Leonard Cohen
The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines. -- Leonard Cohen
Don't write about ideas ... write about convictions of the heart. -- Leonard Cohen
No one masters the heart. -- Leonard Cohen
We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky. -- Leonard Cohen
Don't dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be. -- Leonard Cohen
If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day. -- Leonard Cohen
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. -- Leonard Cohen
I'm afraid to live any place but in expectation. I'm no life-risk. -- Leonard Cohen