Quotes from Leonard Cohen

I smile when I'm angry , I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right , and I'd die for the truth in my secret life .

I kind of limp along like so many of us do in these realms. Occasionally I've felt the grace of another presence in my life. But I can't develop any kind of spiritual structure on that.

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

I'm afraid to live any place but in expectation. I'm no life-risk.

All of my writing has guitars behind it, even the novels.

It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.

And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion

The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.

I never had huge amounts of money when I was young. I had huge amounts of fame, and I always had the sense of labor and recompense. I always said I don't want to work for pay, but I want to get paid for my song.

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

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.'

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.

One is given to self-dramatization from time to time. I intend to live forever.

There's always a nice tune [on radio] - helps you get the dishes done . I like to get the news from time to time - not too often. I don't feel deprived.

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

there's no forsaking what you love no existential leap as witnessed here in time and blood a thousand kisses deep

A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then it's time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I'm wanted at the traffic-jam. They're saving me a seat.

I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.

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

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

I've seen the nations rise and fall. I've heard their stories, heard them all, but love's the only engine of survival.

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

A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love.