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Leonard Cohen Quotes
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Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death and romantic relationships. Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize.

Cohen pursued a career as a poet and novelist during the 1950s and early 1960s; he did not launch a music career until 1967, at the age of 33. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen , was followed by three more albums of folk music: Songs from a Room , Songs of Love and Hate and New Skin for the Old Ceremony . His 1977 record Death of a Ladies' Man, co-written and produced by Phil Spector, was a move away from Cohen's previous minimalist sound. In 1979, Cohen returned with the more traditional Recent Songs, which blended his acoustic style with jazz, Oriental, and Mediterranean influences. Perhaps Cohen's most famous song, "Hallelujah", was first released on his studio album Various Positions in 1984. I'm Your Man in 1988 marked Cohen's turn to synthesized productions and remains his most popular album. In 1992, Cohen released its follow-up, The Future, which had dark lyrics and references to political and social unrest.

Cohen returned to music in 2001 with the release of Ten New Songs, which was a major hit in Canada and Europe. His 11th album, Dear Heather, followed in 2004. Following a successful string of tours between 2008 and 2013, Cohen released three albums in the last five years of his life: Old Ideas , Popular Problems and You Want It Darker , the last of which was released three weeks before his death. A posthumous album titled Thanks for the Dance was released in November 2019, his fifteenth studio album. Wikipedia  

✵ 21. September 1934 – 7. November 2016
Leonard Cohen photo
Leonard Cohen: 169 quotes123 likes

Leonard Cohen Quotes

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

"Sisters of Mercy"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: 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.

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

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

“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”

Leonard Cohen

Source: The Spice Box of Earth

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

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

“Love is the only engine of survival”

Leonard Cohen

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

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

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

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

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

Leonard Cohen

Source: Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs

“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.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

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

Leonard Cohen

“It doesn't matter how anything happens.”

Leonard Cohen

Variant: It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway.
Source: The Favorite Game

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

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

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

Leonard Cohen

"You Have Loved Enough"
Ten New Songs (2001)
Context: I swept the marble chambers,
But you sent me down below.
You kept me from believing
Until you let me know:
That I am not the one who loves —
It's love that chooses me.
When hatred with his package comes,
You forbid delivery.

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

Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing

Source: Book of Longing

“I don't even hate books anymore.”

Leonard Cohen

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

Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing

Source: Book of Longing

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

Leonard Cohen

Source: The Spice Box of Earth

“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”

Leonard Cohen

&quot;You Want It Darker&quot; ·  Full text online http://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-you-want-it-darker-lyrics ·  YouTube audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y <br class="br">You Want It Darker (2016)

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

Leonard Cohen

"That Don't Make It Junk", Ten New Songs (2001)
Other Lyrics

“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."”

Leonard Cohen

"The Captain"
Various Positions (1984)

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

Leonard Cohen

"Anthem"
The Future (1992)

“"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.”

Leonard Cohen

On the lyrics to "You Have Loved Enough" in an interview released at the Ten New Songs site (2001)

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

Leonard Cohen

"Here It Is"
Ten New Songs (2001)

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

Leonard Cohen book Flowers for Hitler

"Front Lawn", Flowers for Hitler (1964)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

"The Stranger Song"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

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

Leonard Cohen

"The Stranger Song"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

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

Leonard Cohen

"Closing Time"
The Future (1992)

“Here I stand, I'm your man.”

Leonard Cohen

"I'm Your Man"
I'm Your Man (1988)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

As quoted in Los Angeles Times (24 September 1995)

“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…”

Leonard Cohen

"Tower Of Song"
I'm Your Man (1988)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

Interview with BBC Radio 1FM (1994)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

Interview with BBC Radio 1FM (1994)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

&quot;First We Take Manhattan&quot; (written in 1986) - Leonard Cohen video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTTC_fD598A - Jennifer Warnes &amp; Leonard Cohen video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0rZ2CPCYBQ <br class="br">I&#x27;m Your Man (1988)

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

Leonard Cohen

"The Future"
The Future (1992)

“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…”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers (1966)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

On his living at a Zen center, as quoted in Los Angeles Times (24 September 1995)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

"Democracy"
The Future (1992)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen

As quoted in &quot;2011&#x27;s Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters&quot; http://www.fpa.es/en/awards/2011/leonard-cohen-1/speech/

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

Leonard Cohen

"A Thousand Kisses Deep" (2001)
Other Lyrics

“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?”

Leonard Cohen

Famous Blue Raincoat
Songs of Love and Hate (1971)

“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.”

Leonard Cohen book The Energy of Slaves

The Energy of Slaves (1972)

“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”

Leonard Cohen

"Everybody Knows" Leonard Cohen and collaborator Sharon Robinson.
I'm Your Man (1988)