Leonard Cohen Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

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

Leonard Cohen
Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee.

Leonard Cohen
I see you standing on the other side.
I don't know how the river got so wide.
I loved you, baby, way back when.
And all the bridges are burning that
We might have crossed and I feel so close to everything that we've lost.
We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again. Now I bid You farewell, I don't when I'll be back.
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track.
But you'll be hearing from me, baby, long after I'm gone.
I'll speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower Of Song

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

Leonard Cohen
I never had the sense that there was an end. That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot.

Leonard Cohen
Songs don't dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

Leonard Cohen
You whisper, "You have loved enough,
Now let me be the Lover."

Leonard Cohen
And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music."

Leonard Cohen
I took trip after trip, sitting on my terrace in Greece, waiting to see God. Generally, I ended up with a bad hangover.

Leonard Cohen
I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling up the street. Wide as a snowfall, heavy as huge falling Zeppelins, her damp thighs are settling on the sharp roofs and wooden balconies. Weather-vanes press the shape of roosters and sail-boats into the skin. The faces of famous statues are preserved like intaglios....

Leonard Cohen
Then Dylan says to me, 'As far as I'm concerned, Leonard, you're Number 1. I'm Number Zero.' Meaning, as I understood it at the time — and I was not ready to dispute it — that his work was beyond measure and my work was pretty good.

Leonard Cohen
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.

Leonard Cohen
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

Leonard Cohen
I'll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door —
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.

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

Leonard Cohen
I don't dare attach myself to a spiritual strategy. I don't dare do that. I've got some work to do. Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me.

Leonard Cohen
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

Leonard Cohen
Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing.

Leonard Cohen
It's coming to America first, The cradle of the best and of the worst. It's here they got the range And the machinery for change And it's here they got the spiritual thirst. It's here the family's broken And it's here the lonely say That the heart has got to open In a fundamental way: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed Through the Squalls of Hate Sail on, sail on.

Leonard Cohen
I'm neither left or right. I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen.

Leonard Cohen
I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee.

Leonard Cohen
When you've fallen on the highway / and you're lying in the rain, / and they ask you how you're doing / of course you'll say you can't complain...

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