Leonard Cohen Quotes & Sayings

Believe nothing of me
except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own. — Leonard Cohen

Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time. — Leonard Cohen

His knowledge of ancient Greece was based entirely on a poem Edgar Allan Poe, a few homosexual encounters with restaurateurs (he ate free at almost every soda fountain in the city), and a plaster reproduction of the Akropolis which, for some reason, he had coated with red nail polish. — 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

We sold ourselves for love but now we are free
I'm so sorry for that ghost I made you be
Only one of us was real and that was me — Leonard Cohen

What a beautiful testament to the creative spirit and its true motives, to creative contribution coming from a place of purpose rather than a hunger for profit. — Leonard Cohen

I didn't fall in love of course it's never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through — Leonard Cohen

Who could have foretold
the heart grows old
from touching others — Leonard Cohen

I don't want to be a star, merely dying. — 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

Now Suzanne takes your 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 — Leonard Cohen

I'm old and the mirrors don't lie. — Leonard Cohen

If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often. — Leonard Cohen

Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time — Leonard Cohen

When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must , I will help you if I can. When it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can. — Leonard Cohen

You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children , you must not do it anymore. A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god . — Leonard Cohen

[S]ongs must be measured by their utility. Any jaunty little tune that can get you from one point to another as you drive, or get you through the dishes, or that can illuminate or dignify your courting, I always appreciate.
-interview, 1995 — Leonard Cohen

We've got to learn to love appearances. — Leonard Cohen

How may we be saints and live in golden coffins
Who will leave on our stone shelves
pathetic notes for intervention
How may we be calm marble gods at ocean altars
Who will murder us for some high reason — Leonard Cohen

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof... — 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

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you. — Leonard Cohen

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. — 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

He never described himself as a poet or his work as poetry. The fact that the lines do not come to the edge of the page is no guarantee. Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation. He hated to argue about the techniques of verse. The poem is a dirty, bloody, burning thing that has to be grabbed first with bare hands. Once the fire celebrated Light, the dirt Humility, the blood Sacrifice. Now the poets are professional fire-eaters, freelancing at any carnival. The fire goes down easily and honours no one in particular. — Leonard Cohen

Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was, Hallelujah. — Leonard Cohen

I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book. — Leonard Cohen

There is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones[ ... ] When one looks at the world, there's only one thing to say, and it's hallelujah. That's the way it is. — Leonard Cohen

GIFT
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me — 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

Love is not a victory march — Leonard Cohen

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

G-d is alive. Magic is afoot. G-d is afoot. Magic is alive. — Leonard Cohen

He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love. — Leonard Cohen

It's a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too. — Leonard Cohen

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. — Leonard Cohen

The Dream" "O I had such a wonderful dream, she said. I dreamed you made love to me. At last, he said to himself, the spirit has taken up some of the heavy work. — 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

If you are the dealer
Let me out of the game
If you are the healer
I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory
Mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame — Leonard Cohen

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. — Leonard Cohen

You have money, fame, youth, beauty, talent. That's a good start ... for feeling good. — Leonard Cohen

My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name. — Leonard Cohen

I am not the one who loves -
It's love that chooses me. — Leonard Cohen

The Remote
I often think about you
when I'm lying alone in
my room with my mouth
open and the remote
lost somewhere in the bed. — Leonard Cohen

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

The art of longing's over, and it's never coming back. — Leonard Cohen

BREAVMAN KNOWS a girl named Shell whose ears were pierced so she could wear the long filigree earrings. The punctures festered and now she has a tiny scar in each earlobe. He discovered them behind her hair. — Leonard Cohen

Each day he lugged
a hunk of something precious
over to his boredom
and once or twice a week
when he was granted
the tiny grace of distance
he perceived that he laboured
as his fathers did
on someone else's pyramid
Thoughts of rebellion
Thoughts of injustice
New Year's resolutions
The seduction of a woman
All these he engraved
numbly letter by letter
Walther PPK-S
Serial No. 115142
stolen from one slave by another — Leonard Cohen

I'm just waiting for the miracle to come — 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 wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end. — Leonard Cohen

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

I'm blackening pages, but I don't know if it's writing. — Leonard Cohen

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

Maybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you. — Leonard Cohen

A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love. — Leonard Cohen

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

All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them — Leonard Cohen

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

Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace. — Leonard Cohen

We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity. — 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 never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. — Leonard Cohen

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. — Leonard Cohen

Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colours that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. — Leonard Cohen

Love is the only engine of survival — Leonard Cohen

Secret kabals of vegetarians habitually gather under the sign to exchange contraband from beyond the Vegetable Barrier. In their pinpoint eyes dances their old dream: the Total Fast. One of them reports a new atrocity published without compassionate comment by the editors of Scientific American: "It has been established that, when pulled from the ground, a radish produces an electronic scream." Not even the triple bill for 65 will comfort them tonight. With a mad laugh born of despair, one of them throws himself on a hot-dog stand, disintegrating on the first chew into pathetic withdrawal symptoms. The rest watch him mournfully and then separate into the Montreal entertainment section. The news is more serious than any of them thought. One is ravished by a steak house with sidewalk ventilation. In a restaurant, one argues with the waiter that he ordered "tomato" but then in a suicide of gallantry he agrees to accept the spaghetti, meat sauce mistake. — Leonard Cohen

One eye filled with blueprints
one eye filled with night — Leonard Cohen

Dear friend, I have searched all night
through each burnt paper,
but I fear I will never find
the formula to let you die — Leonard Cohen

My animal howls
My angel's upset
But I'm not allowed
A trace of regret — Leonard Cohen

You go your way
I'll go your way too — Leonard Cohen

Poetry is a verdict rather than an intention. — Leonard Cohen

As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line. — Leonard Cohen

To the men and women who own men and women
those of us meant to be lovers
we will not pardon you
for wasting our bodies and time — Leonard Cohen

Deprivation is the mother of poetry. — 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

English, I know you ... you are German with a license to kill. — Leonard Cohen

Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm — Leonard Cohen

History is a needle
for putting men asleep
anointed with the poison
Of all they want to keep. — 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

I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. — Leonard Cohen

TRAVEL Loving you, flesh to flesh, I often thought Of travelling penniless to some mud throne Where a master might instruct me how to plot My life away from pain, to love alone In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake. Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost Enough to lose a way I had to take; Breathless beside your body I could not exhaust The will that forbid me contract, vow, Or promise, and often while you slept I looked in awe beyond your beauty. Now I know why many men have stopped and wept Halfway between the loves they leave and seek, And wondered if travel leads them anywhere - Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek, The windy sky's a locket for your hair. — Leonard Cohen

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

And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it's all built upon. — Leonard Cohen

My abandoned narcotics have abandoned me. — Leonard Cohen

Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee — Leonard Cohen

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

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross. — Leonard Cohen

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

And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion — Leonard Cohen

You win a while, and then it's done - Your little winning streak. — Leonard Cohen

I smile when I'm angry , I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right , and I'd die for the truth in my secret life . — 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

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

We are ugly but we have the music. — Leonard Cohen

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. — Leonard Cohen

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew who wrote the Bible.
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

And clenching your fist for the ones like us Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty. — Leonard Cohen

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

GOOD GERMANS

You took me to your family
You warned me well before
That your father is a fascist
And your mother is a whore

I was kind of disappointed
I was bored to elll the truth:
Your folks they're just Good Germans
but you, you're Hitler Youth

So I'm going to live in China
Where you get a better deal
Where your killer is a poet
And your comrade is a girl

-1973 — Leonard Cohen