Leonard Cohen Quotes

I don't remember lighting this cigarette and I don't remember if I'm here alone or waiting for someone.

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.

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.

... 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

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.

Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee

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.

Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or two.

[Prozac] didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on my melancholy, my dark vision, and everything else that I'd taken it for.

And clenching your fist for the ones like us Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty.

History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison Of all they want to keep.

Take one step to the side and it's all absurd.

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

Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace.

The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come.

Don't call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it.

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.

We are ugly but we have the music.

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.

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

You go your way I'll go your way too

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

You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.

Does anybody have a cigarette? I'm looking forward to that first smoke. I've been looking forward to [it] for about 30 years.

It's you my love, you who are the stranger.

No one masters the heart.

...a young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.

You have money, fame, youth, beauty, talent. That's a good start... for feeling good.

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.

All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them

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.

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.

ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars

I want to be paid for my work, not work for my pay.

I have often prayed for you like this Let me have her

As the mist leaves no scar On the dark green hill So my body leaves no scar On you and never will

Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time.

Poetry is a verdict rather than an intention.

I want history to jump on Canada's spine with sharp skates.

You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen, you were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline.

We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity.

Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession.

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

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 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 .

I kind of limp along like so many of us do in these realms. Occasionally I've felt the grace of another presence in my life. But I can't develop any kind of spiritual structure on that.

Who could have foretold the heart grows old from touching others

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

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

Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique.