Quotes from Leonard Cohen

Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy, useless light behind the terror, deathless song in the house of night.

The old are kind The young are hot Love may be blind Desire is not

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

We've got to learn to love appearances.

a young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.

I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love.

Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: It's over, it ain't going any further And now the wheels of heaven stop you feel the devil's riding crop Get ready for the future: it is murder

To kiss her there was to intrude into something private and skeletal, like a turtle's shoulder.

Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and earth with a word.

The first star tonight insanely high, virgin, calm. I have one hour of peace before the documented planets burn me down.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows

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. 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.

I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you, I'm glad you stood in my way.

The Remote I often think about you when I'm lying alone in my room with my mouth open and the remote lost somewhere in the bed.

The most precious secret has been leaked: There is no Opposition!

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

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.

And everything depends upon how near you sleep to me.

Comic books, movies, radio programmes centered their entertainment around the fact of torture. With the clearest of consciences, with a patriotic intensity, children dreamed, talked, acted orgies of physical abuse. Imaginations were released to wander on a reconnaissance mission from Cavalry to Dachau. European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies.

Love me this first day of June. I'd rather sleep with ashes than priestly wisdom. Of all the lonely places in the world this is best where debris is human. I kiss the precious ashes that fall from fiery flesh. On these familiar shapes I lay my kisses down.

Marita, Please find me, I am almost 30

It's the notion that there is no perfection - that this is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still that is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.

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.

How sweet time feels when it's too late