Quotes By Leonard Cohen

And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.

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

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.

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.

I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.

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.

Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing.

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

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.

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

A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.

And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.

We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup.

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

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.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.

I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

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.

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.

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

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

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

Music is the emotional life of most people.

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

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.

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.