I am not the one who loves - It's love that chooses me. When hatred with his package comes, you forbid delivery...
Leonard CohenSeven 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 CohenI 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 CohenI don't remember lighting this cigarette and I don't remember if I'm here alone or waiting for someone.
Leonard CohenMy mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn't be able to make it from room to room. This system has just worked for me, even though I've had to sweat over every word. It's just my style.
Leonard CohenWhat [Prozac] does is completely annihilate the sexual drive, so the question of passion hardly arises.
Leonard CohenSuffering, violent suffering, seems to be something that corresponds with something that we experience.
Leonard CohenI'm neither left or right. I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
Leonard CohenI 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 CohenWhy don't you try to do without him, why don't you try to live alone? Do you really need his hands for your passion? Do you really need his heart for your throne? Do you need his labor for your baby? Do you need his beast for the bone? Do you need to hold a leash to be a lady? I know that you can make it, you can make it on your own.
Leonard CohenToday [people] are ready to take emergency cures, whatever they are, if it's violence, if it's a fascination with serial killing or whatever - the discomfort is so intense. Maybe it's always been like that, certainly it is now.
Leonard Cohen[Prozac] didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on my melancholy, my dark vision, and everything else that I'd taken it for.
Leonard CohenJournalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!
Leonard CohenMaybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you.
Leonard CohenI 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 CohenWhen 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 CohenI 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 CohenSuzanne had a room on a waterfront street in the port of Montreal. Everything happened just as it was put down. She was the wife of a man I knew. Her hospitality was immaculate. Some months later I sang it for Judy Collins over the telephone. The publishing rights were lost in New York City, but it is probably appropriate that I don't own this song. Just the other day I heard some people singing it on a ship in the Caspian Sea.
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 CohenHe 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 CohenNow, I don't want to give you the impression that I'm a great musicologist, but I'm a lot better than what I was described as for a long, long time; you know, people said I only knew three chords when I knew five.
Leonard CohenThe Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come.
Leonard CohenExcept for a couple of hours in the morning which I passed in the company of a sage I stayed in bed without food only a few mouthfuls of water “you are a fine looking old man” I said to myself in the mirror “and what is more you have the correct attitude You don’t care if it ends or if it goes on And as for the women and the music there will be plenty of that in Paradise” Then I went to the Mosque of Memory to express my gratitude
Leonard CohenSeriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that.
Leonard CohenAfter a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.
Leonard CohenBe 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 CohenPeople used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.
Leonard CohenI 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 CohenIf 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 CohenRaise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession.
Leonard CohenIt just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.
Leonard CohenThe psychologists are valiantly trying to provide us with answers, the religious people are trying to provide us with answers. I think it properly falls on the cultural workers to investigate this predicament with a little less concern for the marketplace and a little more concern for their higher calling.
Leonard Cohen