Leonard Cohen Quotes

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 changed and
changed into itself over and over.

This is the only poem I can read. I am the only one who can write it. I didn’t kill myself when things went wrong. I didn’t turn to drugs or teaching. I tried to sleep. But when I couldn’t sleep, I learned to write. I learned to write what might be read on nights like this by one like me.

And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music."

It looks like freedom but it feels like death, it's something in between I guess. It's closing time.

I never think about The Past but sometimes The Past thinks about me and sits down ever so lightly on my face —

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.

I needed so much
To have nothing to touch
I've always been greedy that way

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 chop.
My turn to cook.
Your turn to die for love.
My turn to resurrect.

I DRAW ASIDE THE CURTAIN. You mock us with the beauty of your world.

In our rags of light, all dressed to kill.

there's no forsaking what you love
no existential leap
as witnessed here in time and blood
a thousand kisses deep

This is it

I’m not coming after you

I’m going to lie down for half an hour

This is it

I’m not going down

On your memory

I’m not rubbing my face in it anymore

I’m going to yawn

I’m going to stretch

I’m going to put a knitting needle

Up my nose

And poke out my brain

I don’t want to love you

For the rest of my life

I want your skin

To fall off my skin

I want my clamp

To release your clamp

I don’t want to live

With this tongue hanging out

And another filthy song

In the place

Of my baseball bat

This is it

I’m going to sleep now darling

Don’t try to stop me

I’m going to sleep

I’ll have a smooth face

And I’m going to drool

I’ll be asleep

Whether you love me or not

This is it

The new world order

Of wrinkles and bad breath

It’s not going to be

Like it was before

Eating you

With my eyes closed

Hoping you won’t get up

And go away

It’s going to be something else

Something worse

Something sillier

Something like this

Only shorter

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 see you standing on the other side. I don't know how the river got so wide. I loved you, baby, way back when. And all the bridges are burning that We might have crossed and I feel so close to everything that we've lost. We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again. Now I bid You farewell, I don't when I'll be back. They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track. But you'll be hearing from me, baby, long after I'm gone. I'll be speaking to you sweetly From a window in the Tower Of Song