Leonard Cohen Quotes

At first first nothing will happen to us and later on it will happen to us again.

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.

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.

I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling up the street. Wide as a snowfall, heavy as huge falling Zeppelins, her damp thighs are settling on the sharp roofs and wooden balconies. Weather-vanes press the shape of roosters and sail-boats into the skin. The faces of famous statues are preserved like intaglios.

Part of the shabbiness of our culture, if indeed it is shabby, is that it doesn't seem to prepare people. With all the songs about love and all the movies and all the books, there doesn't seem to be any way that we can prepare the human heart for this experience.

I would like to work with Pat [ Leonard] in any capacity. I would love to hear his versions.

I see people allowing their lives to diminish, to become shallow, so they can't enjoy the deep wells of experience. Maybe it's always been this way, when the heart tends to shut down. If only the heart shut down and there were no repercussions, it would be O.K., but when the heart shuts down, the whole system goes into a kind of despair that is intolerable.

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

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.

You've got a deadline. Well, I do, too: death.

This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industry: a business manager and professional advisers exploit an immensely talented artist's loyalty and trust through greed, self-dealing, concealment, knowing misrepresentation and reckless disregard for professional fiduciary duties.

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.

We all are motivated by deep impulses and deep appetites to serve, even though we may not be able to locate that which we are hoping to serve. So this is just a part of my nature and I think everybody else's nature to offer oneself at the critical moment when the emergency becomes articulate. It's only then that we can locate that willingness to serve.

I said I was ready to die recently, and I think I was exaggerating.That declaration of readiness, no matter what the outcome, that's a part of everyone's soul.

There's no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he's probably the most sophisticated singer we've had in a generation. Nobody is identifying our popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan's a Picasso - that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music.

God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled.

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.

A heavy burden lifted from my soul, I heard that love was out of my control.

I think that all the spiritual training is just to be able to allow you to experience this from a slightly different perspective - one that's a little more stabilized.

The wars they will be fought again The holy dove be caught again bought and sold and bought again; the dove is never free.

The big change is the proximity to death.

Everyone has a kind of magical system that they employ in the hopes that this will open up the channels.

It's easy to look down from the summit you've reached, or even the summit I've reached, and talk about the responsibilities of the artist, but most people are just trying to get their foot in the door and make a living.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

I won't comment on what Bob Dylan said, but I will comment on his receiving the Nobel Prize, which to me is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.

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.

Silence And a deeper silence When the crickets Hesitate

..you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent

I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitoes.

Love is the only engine of survival

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

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth One more thin gypsy thief... Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes I thought it was there for good so I never tried... And Jane came by with a lock of your hair She said that you gave it to her That night that you planned to go clear.

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.

Nothing can stop you from thinking. The human mind is designed to think continually.

You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself.

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

Dear Hitler Take away the torches I'm not guilty I had to have this

If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.

Certainly within any decadent period, you would probably find the purest expressions of conviction, and I do not see that in many of the people I know.

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.

You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes one kind.

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.

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

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.

You win a while, and then it’s done - Your little winning streak.

It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.