Leonard Cohen Quotes

We almost began a perfect conversation, F. said as he turned on the six o'clock news. He turned the radio
very loud and began to shout wildly against the voice of the commentator, who was reciting a list of disasters.
Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer! Listen, my friend, listen to the
present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white, and blue. Sail into the target like a
dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your
memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory
on the Ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. Do you know how to do this?
Do you know how to see the akropolis like the Indians did who never even had one? Fuck a saint, that's how,
find a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar,
dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on
for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but
who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of these quaint impossible cunts and fuck her for your
life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled in her airy
robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch
around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the senseless blows again
and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help! help! it's my time, my second,
my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, fire men! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in
crayon like the akropolis rose! And so on.

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.

You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.

Maybe there's a God above,
As for me, all I've ever seemed to learn from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
Yeah but it's not a complaint that you hear tonight,
It's not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light
No it's a cold and it's a very lonely Hallelujah.

Ah, grief makes us precise!

"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"

We did no train ourselves to receive, because we believed there wasn't anything to receive and we could not endure with this belief.

I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.

TRAVEL Loving you, flesh to flesh, I often thought Of travelling penniless to some mud throne Where a master might instruct me how to plot My life away from pain, to love alone In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake. Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost Enough to lose a way I had to take; Breathless beside your body I could not exhaust The will that forbid me contract, vow, Or promise, and often while you slept I looked in awe beyond your beauty. Now I know why many men have stopped and wept Halfway between the loves they leave and seek, And wondered if travel leads them anywhere — Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek, The windy sky’s a locket for your hair.

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb stairs
and clear his throat outside our door.

It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple

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

I'm planning a catastrophe.

"Stories of the Street"

The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh.
The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas,
And I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose,
Yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose.
I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come,
The cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone.
But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk,
All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us?
And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?
Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me?
O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel,
You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.
The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask
The nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass.
And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite,
And one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night.
O come with me my little one, we will find that farm
And grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm.
And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am,
O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb.
With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl
I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world.
We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky,
And lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.