Quotes from Leonard Cohen

And where do all these highways go, now that we are free? Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me?

it's closing time

Nobody goes into a Zen monastery as a tourist.

If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often. It's a mysterious condition. It's much like the life of a Catholic nun. You're married to a mystery.

Now I am not your father but since your father's dead I will tell the bedtime story before you go to bed

Success is survival.

I've got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I'm very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I'm really starving.

It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder. — Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game . (Vintage; Reprint edition October 14, 2003) Originally published January 1st 1963.

When you were neither seed not child and I was nothing too

We spoke so that we could become tender. It was not the kind of tenderness which follows passion, but the kind which follows failure.

When you were neither seed nor child And I was nothing too

Un pesce rosso è morto in un vaso torbido che avevo lasciato sul pulpito mentre io - come non detto: la mia assenza non era giustificata

and to hell with all the glories of loneliness.

I saw you watching the moon you did note hesitate to love me with it I saw you honouring the wind-flowers caught in the rocks you loved me with them

I did my best, it wasn't much I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you And even though it all went wrong I'll stand before the lord of song With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

I was always working steady, but I never called it art.

But I know she's coming and I know she will look That's the longing and this is the book

It was nothing, it was business but it left an ugly mark.

I was always working steady But I never called it art Meeting Jesus reading Marx Sure it failed my little fire But it's bright the dying spark Go tell the young messiah What happens to the heart.

Blessed are you, embrace of the falling, foundation of the light, master of the human accident.

I sailed like a swan I sank like a rock But time is long gone Past my laughing stock

Si presero per mano e corsero giù per la collina. Le foglie secche si frantumavano sotto i piedi e loro cercarono i mucchi per calpestarle.

You who pour mercy into hell, sole authority in the highest and the lowest worlds, let your anger disperse the mist in this aimless place, where even my sins fall short of the mark.

And that was my mistake I didn't kill the snake I gave the snake a break Unbiblical