Top 100 Quotes About Leonard Cohen
#1. I would love to work with Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, B.B. King. I'd love to do something with Arctic Monkeys, Miles Kane, and The Last Shadow Puppets. If I got a call from Juliette Lewis or PJ Harvey, or Chrissie Hynde, that'd be a thrill.
Imelda May
#2. As a bit of loner, prone to melancholy, with a questionable sexuality, I found great solace in the words of-Dylan, Joni, John Prine and Leonard Cohen. The darker the better.
Jill Sobule
#3. Rejection hurts so much because we take it as a damning judgement passed not merely on our physical appeal but on our entire selves, and by extension (at this stage we're crying into our pillow, as something by Bach or Leonard Cohen plays on the stereo) on our very right to exist. 2.
Alain De Botton
#4. Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far more comfortable giving a journalist "Tom Waits" the character, whose conversation is really a series of strange tales, learned or ad-libbed.
Sylvie Simmons
#5. I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#6. You know, Leonard Cohen is amazing, just a mastermind, and really one of the great geniuses of our time.
Jake Shimabukuro
#7. I love Tom [Waits] for the same reason I love Leonard Cohen, which is that they are both one-offs, templates; they both seemed old, or at least dressed old when they were young; both kind of lived their careers backwards.
Sylvie Simmons
#8. As a kid, I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Etta James and hip-hop as well as music my parents were listening to, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.
Alanis Morissette
#9. My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#10. I can cry myself to sleep because I'm not as great as Leonard Cohen, but who cares? Maybe you can't be as great as some people, but it's a tragedy when you don't follow your dreams.
Lykke Li
#11. Music-wise, I listen to everything. Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman - I guess I like a lot of '70s music.
Bret McKenzie
#12. Leonard Cohen has a way with words and with humor that remind me to lighten up, which I appreciate very much.
Damien Rice
#13. Jesse James is like a Leonard Cohen song, I wanted to do something that was like a pop song.
Andrew Dominik
#14. I'm in my father's car at age 9 or 10 crying to Leonard Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat,' thinking that you could write nearly a love letter to a man who betrayed you by having an affair with your wife. I was thinking how wonderful and pure music can be for explaining situations.
Lou Doillon
#15. 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
Bailey Bristol
#16. Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave know best. Although I wear a lot of jeans, I've been told that Nick Cave doesn't own a pair and wouldn't be caught dead in denim.
Matt Berninger
#17. When I started writing again, especially when I listened to French music and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I realized that these lots talked about themselves. The greatest artists, they didn't sing; they only spoke.
Benjamin Clementine
#18. All the musicians I loved growing up were men. I loved Leonard Cohen, Mick Jagger. I loved Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. Even today, I love Van McCann from Catfish and the Bottlemen and Matt Healy from The 1975.
Halsey
#19. Abjure all accretions and turn off the lights. Put on some music - Leonard Cohen, say, perhaps his 'Various Positions' - and let your mind cool down. Soon you'll forget there's a word called 'stress.'
Pico Iyer
#20. When I was growing up, I fetishised New York City. It was the land of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, it was where Leonard Cohen wrote 'Chelsea Hotel', it was CBGBs and all the punk rock clubs. Artists and musicians lived there, and it was cheap and dangerous.
Moby
#22. I usually listen to the same thing over and over again: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. And Leonard Cohen.
Sue Townsend
#23. There is no decent place to stand in a massacre. Leonard Cohen
Blake Crouch
#24. I've always been curious. I keep a list of people I'd love to have lunch with, like the Pope or Leonard Cohen. I'll read an article about someone I've never met and think, 'I should ask him to lunch!'
Diane Sawyer
#25. Leonard Cohen once said about the benefits of many years of meditation, "The less there was of me, the happier I got." Letting
Pema Chodron
#26. And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.
Glen Hansard
#27. Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time.
PJ Harvey
#28. When I was filming the Marilyn Monroe movie, I was listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen.
Michelle Williams
#29. When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen
Christopher Hitchens
#31. After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.
Leonard Cohen
#32. A fresh spiderweb
billowing
like a spinnaker
across the open window
and here he is
the little master
sailing by
on a thread of milk
wish me luck
admiral
I haven't finished anything
in a long time
Leonard Cohen
#33. 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
#34. So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed
It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.
Leonard Cohen
#35. Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Leonard Cohen
#37. I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitoes.
Leonard Cohen
#38. There are no letters in the mailbox
And there are no grapes upon the vine
And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore
And there are no diamonds in the mine
Leonard Cohen
#39. He knew that hair couldn't feel; he kissed her hair.
Leonard Cohen
#40. The candles burned The moon went down The polished hill The milky town Transparent, weightless, luminous Uncovering the two of us On that fundamental ground Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound And half the perfect world is found.
Leonard Cohen
#41. It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway.
Leonard Cohen
#42. Maybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you.
Leonard Cohen
#43. Listen to a name so private it can burn hear it said aloud and learn and learn History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison of all they want to keep Now
Leonard Cohen
#44. 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
#45. 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 ...
Leonard Cohen
#46. String Reprise / Treaty
I wish there was a treaty we could sign
It's over now, the water and the wine
We were broken then but now we're borderline
And I wish there was a treaty,
I wish there was a treaty between your love and mine
Leonard Cohen
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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.
Leonard Cohen
#50. It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender
Leonard Cohen
#51. 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
#52. It's a pity if someone ... has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart's ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it.
Leonard Cohen
#53. One is distracted by this notion that there is such an thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I'm not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff to come up with my payload
Leonard Cohen
#54. A heavy burden lifted from my soul,
I heard that love was out of my control.
Leonard Cohen
#55. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.
Leonard Cohen
#56. I would like to remind the management that the drinks are watered and the hat-check girl has syphilis and the band is composed of former ss monsters However since it is new year's eve and i have lip cancer i will place my paper hat on my concussion and dance
Leonard Cohen
#57. He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire.
Leonard Cohen
#58. I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive.
Leonard Cohen
#59. Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation - none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy.
Leonard Cohen
#60. 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
#61. We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity.
Leonard Cohen
#63. What a beautiful testament to the creative spirit and its true motives, to creative contribution coming from a place of purpose rather than a hunger for profit.
Leonard Cohen
#64. 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
Leonard Cohen
#65. Pay attention to the cracks, because that's where the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
#66. The first star tonight insanely high, virgin, calm.
I have one hour of peace before the documented planets burn me down.
Leonard Cohen
#67. I have often prayed for you like this Let me have her
Leonard Cohen
#68. If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.
Leonard Cohen
#69. Silence And a deeper silence When the crickets Hesitate
Leonard Cohen
#70. Well it's true, ever since I stopped eating meat I feel a lot better among animals, I feel I can be much more honest when I pat a dog.
Leonard Cohen
#71. I'm neither left or right. I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
Leonard Cohen
#73. My animal howls
My angel's upset
But I'm not allowed
A trace of regret
Leonard Cohen
#74. The moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief.
Leonard Cohen
#76. Your faith was strong, but you needed proof...
Leonard Cohen
#77. How quickly pettiness returns, and that most ignoble form of real estate, the possessive occupation and tyranny over two square inches of human flesh, the wife's cunt.
Leonard Cohen
#78. Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.
Leonard Cohen
#79. Take one step to the side and it's all absurd.
Leonard Cohen
#81. Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care
Leonard Cohen
#82. Sexuality is general, and although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warm. That's the great generosity of women and the great generosity of the creator who worked it out that way, that there are no unilateral agreements of sexuality.
Leonard Cohen
#83. Sail on, sail on, o' might Ship of State. To the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate. Sail on, sail on, sail on.
Leonard Cohen
#84. I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee.
Leonard Cohen
#85. This mental space is occupied and everything is mine.
Leonard Cohen
#86. 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
#87. If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask.
If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask.
If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand.
If you want a partner in life take my hand.
I'm your man.
Leonard Cohen
#88. No penance serves to renew them, no massive transfusions of trust. Why not even revenge can undo them, so twisted these vows and so crushed.
Leonard Cohen
#89. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / Thats how it goes / Everybody knows.
Leonard Cohen
#90. 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
#91. Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms
Leonard Cohen
#92. I'm blackening pages, but I don't know if it's writing.
Leonard Cohen
#94. 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?
Leonard Cohen
#95. 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.
Leonard Cohen
#96. 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.
Leonard Cohen
#97. His knowledge of ancient Greece was based entirely on a poem Edgar Allan Poe, a few homosexual encounters with restaurateurs (he ate free at almost every soda fountain in the city), and a plaster reproduction of the Akropolis which, for some reason, he had coated with red nail polish.
Leonard Cohen
#98. I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk.
Leonard Cohen
#99. First of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again
Leonard Cohen
#100. Now Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
on our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers
Leonard Cohen
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