Leonard Cohen Quotes

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Leonard Cohen

Profession : Singer

Birth : September 21, 1934

I've never sold widely enough to be able to relax about money. I had two kids and their mother to support and my own life. So there was never an option of cutting out.

Leonard Cohen

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.

Leonard Cohen

Success is survival.

Leonard Cohen

Music is the emotional life of most people.

Leonard Cohen

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

Leonard Cohen

This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can... reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah.'

Leonard Cohen

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

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

Leonard Cohen

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

Leonard Cohen

My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.

Leonard Cohen

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.

Leonard Cohen

At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It's a cliche, but it's underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.

Leonard Cohen

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

Leonard Cohen

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

Leonard Cohen

I can make a couple of good sandwiches: tuna salad and chopped egg salad. And Greek bean soup. I was a cook for my old Zen master for many years. So there were two or three dishes that he liked, you know. Teriyaki salmon, a few things.

Leonard Cohen

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.

Leonard Cohen

I have a deep tribal sense. I grew up in a synagogue that my ancestors built. I sat in the third row. My family was decent. They were good people; they were handshake people. So I never had a sense of rebellion.

Leonard Cohen

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

Leonard Cohen