Leonard Cohen Quotes

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I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn't begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like 'Hey Jude' that I could appreciate. But they didn't seem to be essential to the kind of nourishment that I craved.

As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one's life or one's work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.

I never had the sense that there was an end: that there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot.

One of the reasons I'm on tour is to meet people. I consider it a reconnaissance. You know, I consider myself like in a military operation. I don't feel like a citizen.

I've always been into self-dramatization. I intend to live forever.

As we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I'd get a Grammy Award. In fact, I was always touched by the modesty of their interest.

I had a very messianic childhood.

I've got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I'm very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I'm really starving.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

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.

This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can... reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah.'

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

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.

A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.

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.

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.

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.

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

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

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

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.

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.

We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.

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

Success is survival.

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.

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.

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?

I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.

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.

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.

The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.

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.

If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often.

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.

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.

And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.

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.

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.

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.

I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.

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.

I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.

My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.

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.

Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!

I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.

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.

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.

Music is the emotional life of most people.

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.

At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It's a cliche, but it's underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.

I have a deep tribal sense. I grew up in a synagogue that my ancestors built. I sat in the third row. My family was decent. They were good people; they were handshake people. So I never had a sense of rebellion.

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