Top 432 Quotes & Sayings by Leonard Cohen - Page 7

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 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.

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

This particular school of Zen has always considered itself the Marines of the spiritual world, so it has a kind of bias against conceptual thinking in favor of a very rigorous physical life.

a kite is a victim you are sure of. you love it because it pulls.

I listen to the radio and I like all kinds of music, you know, but I like to hear from people who have been there. Hank Williams has been there.

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.

[Europe has] this tradition of self revelation in popular music. We have it here - it's called Country Western Music... I think that's where the deeper and more complex subjects are treated.

I will not be held like a drunkard / under the cold tap of facts

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

His vision was just outstanding. If you think of him in the same way as Pele then you would come close.

Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.

I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.

I'm afraid to live any place but in expectation. I'm no life-risk.

They ended every speech with the word hiro, which means: like I said. Thus each man took responsibility for intruding into the inarticulate murmur of the spheres. To hiro they added the word koue, a cry of joy or distress, according to whether it was sung or howled. Thus they essayed to piece the mysterious curtain which hangs between all talking men: at the end of every utterance a man stepped back, so to speak, and attempted to interpret his words to the listener, attempted to subvert the beguiling intellect with the noise of true emotion.

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.

I try to make those references. I try to make sure that they're not too obscure. But outside of that, I dare not claim anything in the spiritual realm for my own.

Some people, it [songwriting] comes faster. Some people, it comes slower.

Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension.

Even without the mushroom cloud still I would have hated Listen I would have done the same things even if there were no death I will not be held like a drunkard under the cold tap of facts I refuse the universal alibi

i would like to remind the management that the drinks are watered and the hat-check girl has syphilis and the band is composed of former ss monsters However since it is new year's eve and i have lip cancer i will place my paper hat on my concussion and dance

I've expressed my gratitude to my son many times. And his career is far from undistinguished, and it was a great privilege to have someone of this skill bringing this album to conclusion.

It doesn't matter how anything happens.

He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire.

G-d is alive. Magic is afoot. G-d is afoot. Magic is alive.

A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then it’s time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I’m wanted at the traffic-jam. They’re saving me a seat.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy, golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

It is different [to perform in Israel] because it arises from very deep wells of affiliation.

I’ll be marching through the morning, Marching through the night, Moving 'cross the borders Of My Secret Life.

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

When you're younger, you do have that thing that you were talking about where the mouth goes dry. I mean you have reactions, and you do fall in love.

When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.

You can say that I've grown bitter but of this you can be sure. The rich have get their channels in the bedrooms of the poor. And there's a mighty Judgement coming but I may be wrong.

Probably all cultures, certainly Western culture, always have been violent.

We all need that experience of forgetting who you are. Forgetting who you are is such a delicious experience and so frightening that we're in this conflicted predicament.

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

There are a few things that deal with passion. There's Prozac.

Seriousness is the deepest pleasure we have.

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

And sometimes when the night is slow The wretched and the meek We gather up our hearts and go A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I felt like if any two people had any kind of sexual affinity for each other they had to sleep with each other immediately, otherwise it was a terrible betrayal and waste...Fortunately, I'm relieved of those obsessions now. It's really wonderful. It's really wonderful not feeling you have to sleep with everybody.

Coroner's inquest: death by drowning. And he hasn't been to the sea-shore in ten years.

Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached.

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.

And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer, what can I possibly say? I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you, I'm glad you stood in my way

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

there's no forsaking what you love no existential leap as witnessed here in time and blood a thousand kisses deep

I looked into [Prozac]. I must say that it is certainly a wonder drug.

Maybe there's a God above, As for me, all I've ever seemed to learn from love Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. Yeah but it's not a complaint that you hear tonight, It's not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light No it's a cold and it's a very lonely Hallelujah.

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

My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character.

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

To have [Adam's Cohen] microscopic attention to my work was really a great privilege.

I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I’d never been your lover

It's inappropriate for an elderly chap to register, you know, authentically, his feelings, you know, because they really can be interpreted. So you have to get quite covert as you get older. Or you have to find some avuncular way, you know, of responding.

I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love.

I alwaysthought of myself as a competent, minor poet. I know who I'm up against.

It’s a pity if someone… has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart’s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it.

Well, I've been waiting, I was sure we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for I think it's time to board another Please understand, I never had a secret chart to get me to the heart of this or any other matter

If you're lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you're lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this.