Leonard Cohen Quotes

You should go
from place to place
recovering the poems
that have been written for you
to which you can affix your signature.
Don't discuss these matters
with anyone.
Retrieve. Retrieve.
When the basket is full
someone will appear
to whom you can present it.

I told you when I came I was a stranger.

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame You want it darker We kill the flame Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name Vilified, crucified, in the human frame A million candles burning for the help that never came You want it darker Hineni, hineni I'm ready, my Lord

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.

I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon. Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon. And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night: We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

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

Bind me to your will, bind me with these threads of sorrow, and gather me out of the afternoon where I have torn my soul on twenty monstrous altars, offering all things but myself.

Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time.

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

When they lay down beside me I made my confession to them. They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem. 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.

It's four in the morning, the end of december
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better.

I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.

I have no program, I have no five-year plan. … It doesn’t mean that you shouldn't have one! I just move from hotel to hotel, and from bar to bar, and by the grace of the One above occasionally a song comes, and I remember sitting at this particularly obnoxious Polynesian restaurant where they served a kind of coconut drink that was particularly lethal and sinister which contained no alcohol but a certain chemical that demoralized you entirely. And I remember writing on one of their very badly designed napkins, "I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel..." so I dedicate this song to one of the great singers, Janis Joplin.

... 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