"There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
— Leonard Cohen

"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."
— Leonard Cohen

"As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. "
— Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)

"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

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

"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)

"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.

 "Take This Waltz", a
 translation by Leonard Cohen of
 the poem "Little Viennese Waltz"
 by Federico García Lorca.
"
— Leonard Cohen (Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs)

"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)

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

"Never make a decision when you need to pee."
— Leonard Cohen

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

"I raise my glass to the Awful Truth,
Which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth,
Except to say it isn't worth a dime,
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice,
And it's once for the Devil and once for Christ"
— Leonard Cohen

"I have often prayed for you
like this
Let me have her"
— 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

"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

"Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it."
— Leonard Cohen (Selected Poems 1956-1968)

"ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars"
— Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)

"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

"even damnation is poisoned with rainbows."
— 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 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)

"If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem."
— 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)

"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

"I have tried in my way to be free."
— 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

"Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached."
— Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)

"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)

"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"
— Leonard Cohen

"first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again"
— Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)

"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

"Silence

And a deeper silence

When the crickets

Hesitate"
— Leonard Cohen

"It’s a pity if someone… has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart’s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it."
— Leonard Cohen (Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs)

"The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show."
— 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)

"I don't even hate books anymore."
— Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)

"How bitter were
the Prozac pills
of the last
few hundred mornings"
— Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)

"It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway."
— Leonard Cohen

"There is a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in."
— Leonard Cohen

"When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned. "
— Leonard Cohen

"Never make a decision when you have to pee."
— Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)

"Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder "
— Leonard Cohen

"In our rags of light, all dressed to kill."
— Leonard Cohen

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

"'Your body will never be familiar.'"
— Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)

""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

"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)

"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