Quotes from Leonard Cohen

In My Secret Life I saw you this morning, you were moving so fast. Can't seem to loosen my grip On the past. And I miss you so much, there's no one in sight. And we're still making love In my secret life. I smile when I am angry, I cheat and I lie, I do what I have to do to get by, In my secret life.

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore

I have tried in my way to be free.

i didn't fall in love of course it's never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through

first of all nothing will happen and a little later nothing will happen again

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love

Do not be a magician - be magic!

I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.

As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.

The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.

We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.

It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender

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

a kite is a victim you are sure of. you love it because it pulls.

I have often prayed for you like this Let me have her

At the very center of our culture is a crucified man, a tortured man hanging on a cross of wood. You have an image of violence at the very center of our spiritual investigation.

I think that all the spiritual training is just to be able to allow you to experience this from a slightly different perspective - one that's a little more stabilized.

This particular school of Zen has always considered itself the Marines of the spiritual world, so it has a kind of bias against conceptual thinking in favor of a very rigorous physical life.

I try to make those references. I try to make sure that they're not too obscure. But outside of that, I dare not claim anything in the spiritual realm for my own.

Music is the emotional life of the most people.

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.

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.

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.