Leonard Cohen Quotes

If you're squeezed for information,
that's when you've got to play it dumb:
You just say you're out there waiting
for the miracle to come.

Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild he'll never need to deal another. He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.

It doesn't matter how anything happens.

They're lining up the prisoners And the guards are taking aim I struggled with some demons They were middle-class and tame I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim.

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 out journey.

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. So we’re invited into this arena which is a very dangerous arena, where the possibilities of humiliation and failure are ample. So there’s no fixed lesson that one can learn, because the heart is always opening and closing, it’s always softening and hardening. 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.

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.

When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.

I was looking through my dreams
when I saw myself
looking through my dreams
looking through my dreams
and so on and so forth
until I was consumed
in the mysterous activity
of expansion and contraction
breathing in and out at the same time
and disappearing naturally
up my own asshole
i did this for 30 years
but I kept coming back
to let you know how bad it felt
Now I'm here at the end of the song
the end fo the prayer
The ashes have fallen away at last
exactly as they're supposed to do
The chains have slowly
followed the anchors
to the bottom of the sea
It's merely a song
merely a prayer
Thank you, Teachers
Thank you, Everyone

I wrote this next song a while ago to a great American singer who died several years ago. I used to bumb into her from time to time at hotel in New York where a lot of musicians used to come. A lot of those musicians are gone. They say the era is over. They say these are now the times of the conservative, the stable, the order. Perhaps that's true. She certainly stood for something that was beyond order and beyond chaos, beyond the radical and beyond the conservative, which is what every great singer embodies. Something that is not an argument, not a philosophy. Anyway, I wrote this song for her a long time ago.

Although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warmed. That's the great Generosity of women and the great generosity of the Creator who worked it out is that there are no unilateral agreements on sexuality.

All things can be done
whisper museum ovens of
a war that freedom won.

need to see
I never saw
your need for me
your longing raw

"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...."

And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them" But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone