Leonard Cohen quotes:

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.

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.

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

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

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

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

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.

When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do.

Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah

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

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.

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

Music is the emotional life of most people.

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.

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.

The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come."

I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.

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.

Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.

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."

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.

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

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

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

My abandoned narcotics have abandoned me.

The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come.

It's like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it.

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

Comic books, movies, radio programmes centered their entertainment around the fact of torture. With the clearest of consciences, with a patriotic intensity, children dreamed, talked, acted orgies of physical abuse. Imaginations were released to wander on a reconnaissance mission from Cavalry to Dachau. European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies.

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

I am not the one who loved, it's love that chooses me. When hatred with it's package comes, you forbid delivery.

i would like to remind the management that the drinks are watered and the hat-check girl has syphilis and the band is composed of former ss monsters However since it is new year's eve and i have lip cancer i will place my paper hat on my concussion and dance

[Europe has] this tradition of self revelation in popular music. We have it here - it's called Country Western Music... I think that's where the deeper and more complex subjects are treated.

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

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask. If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask. If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand. If you want a partner in life take my hand. I'm your man.

I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk.

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?

Well it's true, ever since I stopped eating meat I feel a lot better among animals, I feel I can be much more honest when I pat a dog.

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.

This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industry: a business manager and professional advisers exploit an immensely talented artist's loyalty and trust through greed, self-dealing, concealment, knowing misrepresentation and reckless disregard for professional fiduciary duties.

Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, Everybody knows that the war is over, Everybody knows the good guys lost.

A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind.

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.

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.

My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Fernando Garcia Lorca.

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....

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

It's not a cry you can hear at night. It's not somebody who has seen the light. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

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

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.

It's the notion that there is no perfection - that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.

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.

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

In My Secret Life" "I saw you this morning, you were moving so fast. Can't seem to loosen my grip On the past. And I miss you so much, there's no one in sight. And we're still making love In my secret life. I smile when I am angry, I cheat and I lie, I do what I have to do to get by, In my secret life.

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

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

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

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

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

As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.

I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.

God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled...

Do not be a magician - be magic!

What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love..

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.

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

It's been a long time since I've stood on a stage in London. Was about 14 or 15 years ago, I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I've taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin. I've also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.

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....

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,I'll be wearing a river's disguise.The hyacinth wild on my shouldermy 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.

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

How quickly pettiness returns, and that most ignoble form of real estate, the possessive occupation and tyranny over two square inches of human flesh, the wife's cunt.

I heard of a manwho says words so beautifullythat if he only speaks their namewomen give themselves to him.If I am dumb beside your bodywhile silence blossoms like tumors on our lipsit is because I hear a man climb stairsand clear his throat outside our door.

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

Everything has a crack in it; that's how the light gets in.

... i didn't fall in love of courseit's never up to youbut she was walking back and forthand i was passing through

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time

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.

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.

Undertow" "I set out one night When the tide was low There were signs in the sky But I did not know I'd be caught in the grip Of the undertow Ditched on a beach Where the sea hates to go With a child in my arms And a chill in my soul And my heart the shape Of a begging bowl

Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique.

Only in Canada could somebody with a voice like mine win 'Vocalist of the Year'.

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

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.

Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.

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

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.

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

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

...a young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.

..you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent

[I had a sense of interior panic].Always. I didn't really know what to call it for a long time, but I have a friend in Greece who used that word panic a lot, and I found myself resisting it, until I totally accepted that as a precise description of my interior condition. It was mostly panic from one moment to the next. And nothing much else was going on.

[Patrick Leonard] is such a magnificent composer. I don't think there is anybody working today with those kind of skills that could translate one of my tunes into that really beautiful chamber music.

[Prozac] didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on my melancholy, my dark vision, and everything else that I'd taken it for.

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

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

A man never got a woman back... not by begging on his knees.

A poem has a certain - a different time. For instance, a poem is a very private experience, and it doesn't have a driving tempo. In other words, you know, you can go back and forward; you can comeback; you can linger. You know, it's a completely different time reference.

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...

A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then itâ??s time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. Iâ??m wanted at the traffic-jam. Theyâ??re saving me a seat.

A song, you know, you've got a tempo. You know,you've got something that is moving swiftly. You can't stop it, you know? Andit's designed to move swiftly from, you know, mouth to mouth, heart to heart,where a poem really speaks to something that has no time and that is - it's acompletely different perception.

Adam [Cohen] is a great singer-songwriter in his own right.

After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.

Ah, grief makes us precise!

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