Leonard Cohen Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.

Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
without your clothes
And everybody knows

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

Leonard Cohen
Except for a couple of hours in the morning which I passed in the company of a sage I stayed in bed without food only a few mouthfuls of water you are a fine looking old man I said to myself in the mirror and what is more you have the correct attitude You don't care if it ends or if it goes on And as for the women and the music there will be plenty of that in Paradise Then I went to the Mosque of Memory to express my gratitude

Leonard Cohen
I have a deep tribal sense. I grew up in a synagogue that my ancestors built. I sat in the third row. My family was decent. They were good people, they were handshake people. So I never had a sense of rebellion.

Leonard Cohen
The candles burned
The moon went down
The polished hill
The milky town
Transparent, weightless, luminous
Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound
And half the perfect world is found.

Leonard Cohen
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

Leonard Cohen
I participated in all these investigations that engaged the imagination of my generation at that time. I even danced and sang with the Hare Krishnas — no robe, I didn't join them, but I was trying everything.

Leonard Cohen
If you're squeezed for information,
that's when you've got to play it dumb:
You just say you're out there waiting
for the miracle to come.

Leonard Cohen
Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

Leonard Cohen
The captain called me to his bed and fumbled for my hand
"Take these silver bars," he said, "I'm giving you command."
Command of what? There's no on here. There's only you and me.
The rest are dead or in retreat or with the enemy.
"Complain, complain, that's all you've done ever since we lost,
If it's not the crucifixion then it's the holocaust."

Leonard Cohen
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.

Leonard Cohen
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.

Leonard Cohen
I swept the marble chambers,
But you sent me down below.
You kept me from believing
Until you let me know:
That I am not the one who loves —
It's love that chooses me.
When hatred with his package comes,
You forbid delivery.

Leonard Cohen
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.

Leonard Cohen
I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove she was moving too,
And every single breath that we drew was
Hallelujah.

Leonard Cohen
Hallelujah" "Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, and she cut your hair. And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah....

Leonard Cohen
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.

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

Leonard Cohen
I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work — just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.

Leonard Cohen
It was only when you walked away I saw you had the perfect ass. Forgive me for not falling in love with your face or your conversation.

Leonard Cohen
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.

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

Leonard Cohen
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