Leonard Cohen Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

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

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

Leonard Cohen
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river.
You can hear the boats go by,
You can spend the night beside her,
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there,
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China.
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover.
And you want to travel with her,
And you want to travel blind,
And you know that she will trust you,
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

Leonard Cohen
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.

Leonard Cohen
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

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

Leonard Cohen
How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings

Leonard Cohen
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.

Leonard Cohen
Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.

Leonard Cohen
I have nothing against the Queen of England. Even in my heart I never resented her for not being Jackie Kennedy. She is, to my mind, a very gallant lady, victimized by whoever it is who designs the tops of her uniforms.

Leonard Cohen
Waiting for the miracle
There's nothing left to do.
I haven't been this happy
since the end of World War II.

Leonard Cohen
I finally broke into the prison
I found my place in the chain
Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows

Leonard Cohen
You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes one kind.

Leonard Cohen
One is distracted by this notion that there is such an thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I'm not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff to come up with my payload

Leonard Cohen
The moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief.

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

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

Leonard Cohen
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...

Leonard Cohen
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night pencilled in.

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

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

Leonard Cohen
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

Leonard Cohen
The dreamers ride against the men of action. Oh see the men of action falling back.

Leonard Cohen
I've seen the nations rise and fall. I've heard their stories, heard them all, but love's the only engine of survival.

Leonard Cohen
What were the bodies like on the beach? Ugly and white and ruined by offices.

Leonard Cohen
If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often. It's a mysterious condition. It's much like the life of a Catholic nun. You're married to a mystery.

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

Leonard Cohen
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.

Leonard Cohen
The wars they will be fought again The holy dove be caught again bought and sold and bought again; the dove is never free.

Leonard Cohen