Leonard Cohen

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

“When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.”

“At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It's a cliche, but it's underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting act...”

“Torah values are the ones that inform my life.”

“This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have the sense that we can't live without love. That life has very little meaning without love.”

“This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can... reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah.'”

“I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.”

“Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!”

“I've got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I'm very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I'm really starving.”

“I like life on the road. It's a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you're in a motorcycle gang.”

“My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn't be able to make it from room to room.”

“I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.”

“I continually blacken pages and scribble away, so I always have a number of songs that are half-finished.”

“so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos... So ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.”

“I heard of a man who says words so beautifully that if he only speaks their name women give themselves to him. If I am dumb beside your body while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside our door.”

“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.”

“There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.”

“There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their problems. I guess they feel I'm writing about some of the things they themselves are going through. But I don't usually have much help to give - there isn't much you can say to someone in the midst of their own crises.”

“I've never sold widely enough to be able to relax about money. I had two kids and their mother to support and my own life. So there was never an option of cutting out.”

“Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.”

“There are writers who are great visionaries, who can depict huge movements - things like that. They're the great writers. I'm just the other kind.”

“I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.”

“I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.”

“As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one's life or one's work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.”

“We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup.”

“I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.”

“You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you're actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice.”

“We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.”

“And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.”

“All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels.”

“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.”

“I never had huge amounts of money when I was young. I had huge amounts of fame, and I always had the sense of labor and recompense. I always said I don't want to work for pay, but I want to get paid for my song.”

“My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the 10,000 nights I spent alone.”

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”

“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.”

“I don't have any sense or urgency about any of my writing, actually. I don't think mankind will be damaged if I don't put out a new album or a new book.”

“The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.”

“I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.”

“Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song.”

“My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs.”

“I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.”

“Music is the emotional life of most people.”

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”

“I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog.”

“I never had the sense that there was an end: that there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot.”

“I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.”

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

“The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.”

“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.”

“... 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”

“It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which...”

“Deprivation is the mother of poetry.”

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

“I was born in a suit.”

“My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.”

“first of all nothing will happen and a little later nothing will happen again”

“To a Young Nun This undemanding love that our staggered births have purchased for us — You in your generation, I in mine. I am not the one you are looking for. You are not the one I've stopped looking for. How sweetly time disposes of us as we go arm in arm over the Bridge of Details: Your turn to c...”

“DEAR DI­ARY You are greater than the Bible And the Con­fer­ence of the Birds And the Up­an­ishads All put to­geth­er You are more se­vere Than the Scrip­tures And Ham­mura­bi’s Code More dan­ger­ous than Luther’s pa­per Nailed to the Cathe­dral door You are sweet­er Than the Song of Songs Might­ier...”

“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”

“Though I don't believe, I come to you now, and I lift my doubt to your mercy.”

“Show me slowly what I only know the limits of Dance me to the end of love”

“At first first nothing will happen to us and later on it will happen to us again.”

“Who could have foretold the heart grows old from touching others”

“Your faith was strong, but you needed proof...”

“Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.”

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

“I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune.”

“Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.”

“The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It's useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way.”

“There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.”

“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.”

“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.”