Song Quotes by Leonard Cohen

Music is the emotional life of the most people.

— Leonard Cohen

“The maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum”

— Leonard Cohen

Music is the emotional life of most people.

— Leonard Cohen

We are ugly but we have the music.

— Leonard Cohen

“The sweetest little song: You go your way I'll go your way too!”

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

“Then I start to struggle With a feeble song Which will overcome me Many miles from home”

— Leonard Cohen

I would say the hummingbird really deserves the royalties on [some of my songs].

— Leonard Cohen

“and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and…

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

It's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.

— Leonard Cohen

Songs seem to take me a long time. I don't know why; they're not especially excellent for taking so long.

— Leonard Cohen

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles…

— Leonard Cohen

I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I…

— Leonard Cohen

“Don't matter if you're rich and strong Don't matter if you're weak Don't matter if you write a song The nightingales repeat…

— Leonard Cohen

Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I…

— Leonard Cohen

There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are…

— Leonard Cohen

I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many…

— Leonard Cohen

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons…

— Leonard Cohen

Part of the shabbiness of our culture, if indeed it is shabby, is that it doesn't seem to prepare people. With all…

— Leonard Cohen

My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places I used to play. And I’m crazy for love…

— Leonard Cohen

I know that there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do. And…

— Leonard Cohen

“You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well, really, what's it…

— Leonard Cohen

A song, you know, you've got a tempo. You know,you've got something that is moving swiftly. You can't stop it, you know?…

— Leonard Cohen

I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general…is that enterprise that stops our minds…

— Leonard Cohen

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people…

— Leonard Cohen

As soon as anybody does one of my songs, I rejoice. This particular case of all these great singers doing my work…

— Leonard Cohen

Suzanne had a room on a waterfront street in the port of Montreal. Everything happened just as it was put down. She…

— Leonard Cohen

This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industry: a business manager…

— Leonard Cohen

“-You know how to call me although such a noise now would only confuse the air Neither of us can forget the…

— Leonard Cohen

Some people, it [songwriting] comes faster. Some people, it comes slower.

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

— Leonard Cohen

I continually blacken pages and scribble away, so I always have a number of songs that are half-finished.

— Leonard Cohen

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't…

— Leonard Cohen

The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.

— Leonard Cohen

I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee.

— Leonard Cohen

My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot…

— Leonard Cohen

Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always…

— Leonard Cohen

Any of the decisions that I made, if one could actually locate a shape or form, were all within a wall, the…

— Leonard Cohen