Quotes By 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.

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.

In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?

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.

Music is the emotional life of most people.

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.

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.

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.

If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often.

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

We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.

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

Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.

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

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 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.