Leonard Cohen Quotes - Page 11

I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

I said I was ready to die recently, and I think I was exaggerating.That declaration of readiness, no matter what the outcome, that's a part of everyone's soul.

You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you're actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice.

It's like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it.

You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children , you must not do it anymore. A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god .

And may my bronze name / touch always her thousand fingers / grow brighter with her weeping / until I am fixed like a galaxy / and memorized / in her secret and fragile skies.

You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen, you were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline.

Shouldering your loneliness like a gun that you will not learn to aim, you stumble into this movie house then you climb, you climb into the frame.

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

It’s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too.

What were the bodies like on the beach? Ugly and white and ruined by offices.

Undertow" "I set out one night When the tide was low There were signs in the sky But I did not know I'd be caught in the grip Of the undertow Ditched on a beach Where the sea hates to go With a child in my arms And a chill in my soul And my heart the shape Of a begging bowl

Maybe there's a God above, As for me, all I've ever seemed to learn from love Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. Yeah but it's not a complaint that you hear tonight, It's not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light No it's a cold and it's a very lonely Hallelujah.

If you're squeezed for information, / that's when you've got to play it dumb: / You just say you're out there waiting / for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don't know what to say.

Ring the bells that still can ring.

What [Prozac] does is completely annihilate the sexual drive, so the question of passion hardly arises.

History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison Of all they want to keep.

How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings

Suffering, violent suffering, seems to be something that corresponds with something that we experience.

I don't even hate books anymore.

I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique.