Leonard Cohen > Quotes

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― 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, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

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

“Never make a decision when you need to pee.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care”
― Leonard Cohen

“I don't remember
lighting this cigarette
and I don't remember
if I'm here alone
or waiting for someone.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“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 ”
― Leonard Cohen

“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.”
― Leonard Cohen

“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.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .”
― Leonard Cohen

“As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. ”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“I have tried in my way to be free.”
― Leonard Cohen

“first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“... 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, Book of Longing

“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“You go your way
I'll go your way too”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems 1956-1968

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

“It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway.”
― Leonard Cohen

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

“It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”
― Leonard Cohen

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen

“I have often prayed for you
like this
Let me have her”
― Leonard Cohen

“A heavy burden lifted from my soul,
I heard that love was out of my control.”
― Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

“In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me...
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.”
― Leonard Cohen

“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”
― Leonard Cohen

“Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.”
― 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'm planning a catastrophe.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.”
― 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

“My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in places I used to play.
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on.
I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.”
― Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love

“Deprivation is the mother of poetry.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah”
― Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs

“You live your life as if it's real.......a thousand kisses deep”
― Leonard Cohen

“a kite is a victim you are sure of.
you love it because it pulls.”
― Leonard Cohen

“There's a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else."

Then let's be quiet together.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”
― Leonard Cohen

“How bitter were
the Prozac pills
of the last
few hundred mornings”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned. ”
― Leonard Cohen

“A Kite is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.


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


There are some men

There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names through time
Grave markers are not high enough
or green
and sons go far away to lose the fist
their father’s hand will always seem

I had a friend he lived and died
in mighty silence and with dignity
left no book son or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk
fragrant, dark and softly white
under the pale of mist
I name this mountain after him.


-Believe nothing of me
Except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
I did not see any cities burn,
I heard no promises of endless night,
I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
Promise me that I will return.-


-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.-


Song

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover

-Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart.
Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and
fragrance of dying.-”
― Leonard Cohen, The Spice Box of Earth

“Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.”
― Leonard Cohen

“It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”
― Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs

“Now suzanne takes you 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
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.”
― Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs

“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