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Leonard Cohen: 169 quotes123 likes
Famous Leonard Cohen Quotes
"Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" · Duet with Judy Collins on Soundstage (January 1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJImYNGqwk <br class="br">Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) <br class="br">Context: I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,<br>Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,<br>Yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,<br>In city and in forest they smiled like me and you,<br>But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,<br>your eyes are soft with sorrow,<br>Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
Leonard Cohen Quotes about love
"Everybody Knows"
I'm Your Man (1988)
Source: The Leonard Cohen Collection
"Love Itself"
Ten New Songs (2001)
“May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.”
"Here It Is"
Ten New Songs (2001)
“A heavy burden lifted from my soul,
I heard that love was out of my control.”
Source: Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs
Leonard Cohen Quotes about light
"Love Itself"
Ten New Songs (2001)
Context: p>The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.</p
"Hallelujah"
Various Positions (1984)
Context: 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
“Everything has a crack in it; that's how the light gets in.”
"Anthem"
The Future (1992)
Variant: There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
Source: Selected Poems, 1956-1968
Context: 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: Trending quotes
"Suzanne" - Isle of Wight performance (1970) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_56ep729TE - Live in London (2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snMOmHzgssk <br class="br">Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) <br class="br">Context: Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river.<br>You can hear the boats go by,<br>You can spend the night beside her,<br>And you know that she's half crazy<br>But that's why you want to be there,<br>And she feeds you tea and oranges<br>That come all the way from China.<br>And just when you mean to tell her<br>That you have no love to give her<br>Then she gets you on her wavelength<br>And she lets the river answer<br>That you've always been her lover.<br>And you want to travel with her,<br>And you want to travel blind,<br>And you know that she will trust you,<br>For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.
Leonard Cohen Quotes
“Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.”
"Bird on the Wire"
Songs from a Room (1969)
“I'm crazy for love but
I'm not coming on.
I'm just paying my rent everyday
In the Tower Of Song.”
"Tower Of Song"
I'm Your Man (1988)
Context: My friends are gone and
My hair is grey.
I ache in the places where I used to play.
And I'm crazy for love but
I'm not coming on.
I'm just paying my rent everyday
In the Tower Of Song.
Introducing "If It Be Your Will"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Context: I don't know which side is anybody on any more. I don't really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we're on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order. That doesn't mean that I don't wish you courage in your struggle. There is on both sides of the struggle men of good will. That is important to remember. On both sides of the struggle, some struggling for freedom, some struggling for safety and solemn testimony of that unbroken faith which binds generations one to another I sing this song, "If It Be Your Will"
"Suzanne"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: 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
“You whisper, "You have loved enough,
Now let me be the Lover."”
"You Have Loved Enough"
Ten New Songs (2001)
“And you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover”
Leonard Cohen book The Spice-Box of Earth
"Song", The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)
“And here you are hurried,
And here you are gone;
And here is the love,
That it's all built upon.”
"Here It Is"
Ten New Songs (2001)
“I see you standing on the other side.
I don't know how the river got so wide.”
" Tower Of Song http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/leonard+cohen/tower+of+song_20082815.html" - Tower of Song with U2, Video http://vimeo.com/13286028 <br class="br">I'm Your Man (1988) <br class="br">Context: p>I see you standing on the other side.<br>I don't know how the river got so wide.<br>I loved you, baby, way back when.<br>And all the bridges are burning that<br>We might have crossed and I feel so close to everything that we've lost.<br>We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again.Now I bid You farewell, I don't when I'll be back.<br>They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track.<br>But you'll be hearing from me, baby, long after I'm gone.<br>I'll speaking to you sweetly<br>From a window in the Tower Of Song</p
“Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.”
"Sisters of Mercy"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.
"The Stranger Song"
Alludes to the dealer in Nelson Algren's 1949 novel The Man with the Golden Arm.
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: O you've seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it's rusted from the elbow to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
"Hallelujah" - 1984 performance http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3rwo0_leonard-cohen-hallelujah_music · Montreal Jazz Festival 2008 performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FpwjQLZTTs <br class="br">Various Positions (1984) <br class="br">Context: Now I've heard there was a secret chord<br>That David played, and it pleased the Lord<br>But you don't really care for music, do you?<br>It goes like this the fourth, the fifth<br>The minor fall, the major lift<br>The baffled king composing Hallelujah
“I have no program, I have no five-year plan.”
Introducing "Chelsea Hotel #2"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Context: 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.
“When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can.”
"Story of Isaac"
Songs from a Room (1969)
Context: When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can.
“Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”
"Leonard Cohen Penned Letter to 'So Long, Marianne' Muse Before Her Death" by Daniel Kreps, in Rolling Stone (7 August 2016) http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/leonard-cohen-pens-final-letter-to-so-long-marianne-muse-w433144 <br class="br">Context: Well Marianne it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. … And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.
“I guess you go for nothing
if you really want to go that far.”
"Death of a Ladies' Man" (1977)
Other Lyrics
Context: So the great affair is over
but whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant
and so deeply unimpressed.
It's like our visit to the moon
or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing
if you really want to go that far.
“I know there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do.”
Introducing "Hallelujah"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Context: I know there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do. And before this great force, which is greater than any government I stand in awe and I kneel in respect and it is to this great judgment that I dedicate this next song, "Hallelujah".
"Half the Perfect World" (2006) (co-written with Anjani)
Other Lyrics
Context: The candles burned
The moon went down
The polished hill
The milky town
Transparent, weightless, luminous
Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound
And half the perfect world is found.
Introducing "Who by Fire"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Context: I come from a country where we do not have the same struggles as you have. I respect your struggles. And it may surprise you, but I respect both sides of this struggle. It seems to be that in Europe there needs to be a left foot and a right foot to move forward. I wish that both feet move forward and the body moves towards its proper destiny. This is an intense country; the people are heroic, the spirit is independent. It is a difficult country to govern, it needs a strong government and a strong union. … I would like to say to you, to the leaders of the left, and the leaders of the right, I sing... I sing for everyone. My song has no flag, my song has no party. And I say the prayer, that we said in our synagogue, I say it for the leader of your union and the leader of your party. May the Lord put a spirit, a wisdom and understanding into the hearts of your leaders and into the hearts of all their counsellors.
Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers
Beautiful Losers (1966)
Context: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
As quoted in "The Joking Troubadour of Gloom" in The Daily Telegraph (26 April 1993) http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/feb93.htm <br class="br">Context: I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy. And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around. I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. … I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all. I've always been free from hope. It's never been one of my great solaces. I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful..... I think that it was Ben Jonson who said, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies, but cheerfulness keeps breaking through.
“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”
Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers
Source: Beautiful Losers
“Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.”
Leonard Cohen Selected Poems 1956–1968
Source: Selected Poems 1956-1968
“Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah”
Source: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs
“The sweetest little song:
You go your way
I'll go your way too!”
Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing
Variant: You go your way
I'll go your way too
Source: Book of Longing
“Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached.”
Source: The Favorite Game
“At first first nothing will happen to us
and later on
it will happen to us again.”
Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing
Variant: first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again
Source: Book of Longing
"I'm Your Man"
I'm Your Man (1988)
"First We Take Manhattan"
I'm Your Man (1988)
"Waiting for the Miracle" (co-written with Sharon Robinson)
The Future (1992)
“It's you my love, you who are the stranger.”
"The Stranger Song"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
"You Want It Darker"
You Want It Darker (2016)
“Only in Canada could somebody with a voice like mine win 'Vocalist of the Year.”
First words of his speech accepting the Juno Award for Best Male Vocalist in Canada (1992)
