Leonard Cohen Quotes - Page 12

I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.

I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events.

I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.

I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.

I heard of a man who says words so beautifully that if he only speaks their name women give themselves to him. If I am dumb beside your body while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside our door.

After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.

Anyone who's been a heavy drinker and heavy smoker and has the good future to survive that and give it up knows what a very different kind of daily existence one has. I was smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a day. And I was drinking heavily on tours.

This mental space is occupied and everything is mine.

The dreamers ride against the men of action. Oh see the men of action falling back.

I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive.

Ah, grief makes us precise!

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

[Prozac] didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on my melancholy, my dark vision, and everything else that I'd taken it for.

Any of the decisions that I made, if one could actually locate a shape or form, were all within a wall, the landscape of music.

But remember when I moved in you And the holy dove was moving too And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love.

As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line.

Just to get serious about this thing, you know. One has to be compassionate. It's true that people are up against things, economically and emotionally.

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask. If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask. If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand. If you want a partner in life take my hand. I'm your man.

What a beautiful testament to the creative spirit and its true motives, to creative contribution coming from a place of purpose rather than a hunger for profit.

I would like to study Judaism. I feel that my own Jewish education was really quite superficial from a certain point of view. Although I think the values were very clear and were presented very clearly, there's - there were aspects of the whole tradition that were not emphasized. And, you know, I've come to those areas myself as I've grown older. But I would like to go deeper.

And clenching your fist for the ones like us Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty.

I don't remember lighting this cigarette and I don't remember if I'm here alone or waiting for someone.

I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling up the street. Wide as a snowfall, heavy as huge falling Zeppelins, her damp thighs are settling on the sharp roofs and wooden balconies. Weather-vanes press the shape of roosters and sail-boats into the skin. The faces of famous statues are preserved like intaglios.

Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm