Leonard Cohen Quotes

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“ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars”

“I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover”

“Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms”

“I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.”

“Love is the only engine of survival”

“.. you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent”

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

“Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love”

“It’s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too.”

“In our rags of light, all dressed to kill.”

“It doesn't matter how anything happens.”

“My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character.”

“Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time.”

“I am not the one who loves —
It's love that chooses me.
When hatred with his package comes,
You forbid delivery.”

“I will not be held like a drunkard / under the cold tap of facts”

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

“Who could have foretold
the heart grows old
from touching others”

“The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come.”

“Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.”

“I don't even hate books anymore.”

“I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book.”

“Believe nothing of me
except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.”

“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 fought against the bottle
but I had to do it drunk”

“The captain called me to his bed and fumbled for my hand
"Take these silver bars," he said, "I'm giving you command."
Command of what? There's no on here. There's only you and me.
The rest are dead or in retreat or with the enemy.
"Complain, complain, that's all you've done ever since we lost,
If it's not the crucifixion then it's the holocaust."”

“Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee.”

“"You have loved enough, now let me be the lover." You could say that God is speaking to you or the cosmos, or your lover. It just means, like, Forget it. Lean back and be loved by all that is already loving you. It is your effort at love that is preventing you from experiencing it. It is like if you ever taught kids how to swim. The most difficult thing is Goddam to understand that they will float, if they relax, if they hold their breath and relax, they will actually float. For most kids it is difficult to swim. They feel they are going to sink like a stone to the bottom of the lake.”

“Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will”

“Rust rust rust
in the engines of love and time”

“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.”

“I told you when I came I was a stranger.”

“We're drinking and we're dancing
but there's nothing really happening.
The place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night.”

“Here I stand, I'm your man.”

“People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.”

“You can say that I've grown bitter but of this you can be sure.
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor.
And there's a mighty Judgement coming
but I may be wrong…”

“Now, I don't want to give you the impression that I'm a great musicologist, but I'm a lot better than what I was described as for a long, long time; you know, people said I only knew three chords when I knew five.”

“I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work — just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.”

“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.”

“I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.”

“God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled…”

“This is the very contrary of dropping out. Most people can't wait to get home to their house or apartment and shut that door and turn on the TV. To me, that's dropping out.”

“But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U. S. A.”

“And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”

“And sometimes when the night is slow
The wretched and the meek
We gather up our hearts and go
A Thousand Kisses Deep.”

“Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyesI thought it was there for good so I never triedAnd Jane came by with a lock of your hairShe said that you gave it to herThat night that you planned to go clearDid you ever go clear?”

“It was only when you walked away I saw you had the perfect ass. Forgive me for not falling in love with your face or your conversation.”

“Everybody knows that the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows that the captain lied...
And everybody knows that you're in trouble...
Everybody knows it's coming apart.
Take one last look...Before it blows.
Everybody knows”