Leonard Cohen > Quotes

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
― Leonard Cohen

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“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, The Favorite Game

“And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.”
― Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

“I don't remember
lighting this cigarette
and I don't remember
if I'm here alone
or waiting for someone.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“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

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Never make a decision when you need to pee.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“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

“You go your way
I'll go your way too”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care”
― Leonard Cohen

“In My Secret Life"

"I saw you this morning,
you were moving so fast.
Can't seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much,
there's no one in sight.
And we're still making love
In my secret life.
I smile when I am angry,
I cheat and I lie,
I do what I have to do
to get by,
In my secret life.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“I have tried in my way to be free.”
― Leonard Cohen

“... i didn't fall in love of course
it's never up to you
but she was walking back and forth
and i was passing through”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“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”
― Leonard Cohen

“Do not be a magician - be magic!”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“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

“As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”
― 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, Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs

“It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”
― Leonard Cohen

“Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.”
― Leonard Cohen

“a kite is a victim you are sure of.
you love it because it pulls.”
― Leonard Cohen

“I have often prayed for you
like this
Let me have her”
― Leonard Cohen