Leonard Norman Cohen CC GOQ was a Canadian singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, loss, death and romantic relationships. Profoundly inspirational Leonard Cohen quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Leonard Cohen Quotes
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen
There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen
I like life on the road. It’s a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you’re in a motorcycle gang. Leonard Cohen
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen
Success is survival. Leonard Cohen
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world. Leonard Cohen
At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It’s a cliche, but it’s underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable. Leonard Cohen
How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me? Leonard Cohen
In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress. Leonard Cohen
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. Leonard Cohen
I don’t really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I’d like to come back as my daughter’s dog. Leonard Cohen
I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin. Leonard Cohen
When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That’s about all you can do. Leonard Cohen
If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day. Leonard Cohen
This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have the sense that we can’t live without love. That life has very little meaning without love. Leonard Cohen
Never make a decision when you need to pee. Leonard Cohen
Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It’s a mysterious process. Leonard Cohen
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty. Leonard Cohen
My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca. Leonard Cohen
Here’s to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don’t even care. Leonard Cohen
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. Leonard Cohen
Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore. Leonard Cohen
I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune. Leonard Cohen
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward döve Dance me to the end of love. Leonard Cohen
I was born in a suit. Leonard Cohen
I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree. Leonard Cohen
To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself. Leonard Cohen
My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone. Leonard Cohen
I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly. Leonard Cohen
As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. Leonard Cohen
There were times that I thought I was good looking. Leonard Cohen
We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey. Leonard Cohen
As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn’t understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line. Leonard Cohen
It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender. Leonard Cohen
The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape. Leonard Cohen
Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act. Leonard Cohen
I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin. Leonard Cohen
We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear. Leonard Cohen
If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. Leonard Cohen
It doesn’t matter what you do because it’s going to happen anyway. Leonard Cohen
My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn’t be able to make it from room to room. Leonard Cohen
Please make me empty, if I’m empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I’m not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness. Leonard Cohen
A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love. Leonard Cohen
I’m planning a catastrophe. Leonard Cohen
The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It’s useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way. Leonard Cohen
Love is a fire It burns everyone It disfigures everyone t is the world’s excuse for being ugly. Leonard Cohen
I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse. Leonard Cohen
My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name. Leonard Cohen
As we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I’d get a Grammy Award. In fact, I was always touched by the modesty of their interest. Leonard Cohen
We are ugly but we have the music. Leonard Cohen
And I had not much of a voice. I didn’t play that great guitar either. Leonard Cohen
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t. Leonard Cohen
Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you’re not and that’s what you always reach for in a song. Leonard Cohen
When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned. Leonard Cohen
I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us you don’t write the songs anyhow. So if you’re lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you’re lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this. Leonard Cohen
It’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. Leonard Cohen
I am an old scholar, better looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face. Leonard Cohen
Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don’t know what to say. Leonard Cohen
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they’re paid for it. Leonard Cohen
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. Leonard Cohen
You can keep the body as well oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you’re actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice. Leonard Cohen
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
As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now. Leonard Cohen
I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world. Leonard Cohen
My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn’t pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs. Leonard Cohen
And may my bronze name touch always her thousand fingers grow brighter with her weeping until I am fixed like a galaxy and memorized in her secret and fragile skies. Leonard Cohen
I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together. Leonard Cohen
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
I had a very messianic childhood. Leonard Cohen
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
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world. Leonard Cohen
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. Leonard Cohen
I didn’t want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write. Leonard Cohen
I am not the one who loved, it’s love that chooses me. When hatred with it’s package comes, you forbid delivery. Leonard Cohen
I don’t have any sense or urgency about any of my writing, actually. I don’t think mankind will be damaged if I don’t put out a new album or a new book. Leonard Cohen
Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached. Leonard Cohen
