Leonard Cohen Quotes

253 quotes in 2814 categories

• Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.
• 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…
• In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.
• The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.
• A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.
• 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.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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 speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes…
• I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.
• I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.
• Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.
• To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's…
• 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…
• We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.
• 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…
• There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
• Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

Browse Leonard Cohen Quotes by Category