Top 432 Quotes & Sayings by Leonard Cohen - Page 3

It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway.

It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender

I loved you for a long, long time I know this love is real It don't matter how it all went wrong That don't change the way I feel And I can't believe that time's Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of There ain't no cure for love

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everybody knows the captain lied. Everybody got this broken feeling, like their father or their dog just died. Everybody talking to their pockets. Everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long-stem rose. Everybody knows.

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

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.

Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't.

You should go from place to place recovering the poems that have been written for you to which you can affix your signature. Don't discuss these matters with anyone. Retrieve. Retrieve. When the basket is full someone will appear to whom you can present it.

Now suzanne takes you hand And she leads you to the river She is wearing rags and feathers From salvation army counters And the sun pours down like honey On our lady of the harbour And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever While suzanne holds the mirror And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.

A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

I think there's an appetite for seriousness. Seriousness is voluptuous, and very few people have allowed themselves the luxury of it.

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul.

As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.

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. This system has just worked for me, even though I've had to sweat over every word. It's just my style.

It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.

Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.

I don't trust my inner feelings, inner feelings come and go.

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

The big change is the proximity to death.

Pay attention to the cracks, because that's where the light gets in.

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.

I couldn't feel so I learned to touch.

Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.

May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And my love, Goodbye.

Deprivation is the mother of poetry.

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

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

I am not the one who loves - It's love that chooses me. When hatred with his package comes, you forbid delivery...

First of all nothing will happen and a little later nothing will happen again.

I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.

We are awakening from the dream of isolation, from the dream of loneliness, and it's a terrible shock.

People 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.

You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.

Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.

As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.

Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace.

I guess you go for nothing, if you really want to go that far.

I'd written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: 'Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don't listen to me'.

this is every musician's dream, to stand in front of an audience and not have to prove your credentials.

Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms

I dreamed about you baby. It was just the other night. Most of you was naked Ah, but some of you was light.

Why 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.

The duty of lovers is to tarnish the Golden Rule

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.

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

I'm never sure why I do anything, to tell you the truth.

A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love.

In Montreal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, “the winter has not killed us again!

Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee

Some people are graced with a flow; some people are graced with something less than a flow. I'm one of those.

I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

Suzanne 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.

Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

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

A man never got a woman back... not by begging on his knees.

I have tried in my way to be free.