Leonard Cohen Quotes

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

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.

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.

I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.

I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.

May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude.

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky.

It's the notion that there is no perfection - that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.

You live your life as if it's real.......a thousand kisses deep

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore

Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free!!

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.

When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.

To keep our hearts open is probably the most urgent responsibility you have as you get older.

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

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.

a kite is a victim you are sure of. you love it because it pulls.

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 dove Dance me to the end of love

Never make a decision when you need to pee.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

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 .

I'd written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: 'Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don't listen to me'.

I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.

I’ve seen the nations rise and fall. I’ve heard their stories, heard them all, but love’s the only engine of survival.

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul.

I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song.

At the very center of our culture is a crucified man, a tortured man hanging on a cross of wood. You have an image of violence at the very center of our spiritual investigation.

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.

Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

I loved you for a long, long time I know this love is real It don't matter how it all went wrong That don't change the way I feel And I can't believe that time's Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of There ain't no cure for love

In the broken places, the light shines through.

The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.

I don't think there's any difference between a crush and profound love. I think the experience is that you dissolve your sentries and your battalions for a moment and you really do see that there is this unfixed free-flowing energy of emotion and thought between people, that it really is there.

Well, you know, there's depression and depression. What I mean by depression in my own case is that depression isn't just the blues. It's not just like I have a hangover in the weekend ... the girl didn't show up or something like that. It isn't that. It's not really depression, it's a kind of mental violence which stops you from functioning properly from one moment to the next. You lose something somewhere and suddenly you're gripped by a kind of angst of the heart and of the spirit.

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.

Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind.

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.

It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.

Hallelujah" "Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, and she cut your hair. And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.

You lose your grip, and then you slip into the Masterpiece.

Your heart opens and of course you're completely panicked because you're used to guarding this organ with your life.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico Garcia Lorca.