Leonard Cohen Quotes

There’s always a group of songs that I’m working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I’m always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.

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.

You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you’re actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice.

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

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

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.

Never make a decision when you need to pee.

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

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

I can make a couple of good sandwiches: tuna salad and chopped egg salad. And Greek bean soup. I was a cook for my old Zen master for many years. So there were two or three dishes that he liked, you know. Teriyaki salmon, a few things.

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

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.

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.

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.

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.

All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve never sold widely enough to be able to relax about money. I had two kids and their mother to support and my own life. So there was never an option of cutting out.

There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their problems. I guess they feel I’m writing about some of the things they themselves are going through. But I don’t usually have much help to give – there isn’t much you can say to someone in the midst of their own crises.

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

May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude.

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

Torah values are the ones that inform my life.

Songs seem to take me a long time. I don’t know why; they’re not especially excellent for taking so long.

There are writers who are great visionaries, who can depict huge movements – things like that. They’re the great writers. I’m just the other kind.

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore

I was born in a suit.

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.

Some people care about their work lasting forever – I have little interest in it.

Don’t dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be.

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

I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I like life on the road. It’s a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you’re in a motorcycle gang.

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.’

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

My 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.

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

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.

My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the 10,000 nights I spent alone.

I never had huge amounts of money when I was young. I had huge amounts of fame, and I always had the sense of labor and recompense. I always said I don’t want to work for pay, but I want to get paid for my song.

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