Leonard Cohen
I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song.Collection: Song
We all are motivated by deep impulses and deep appetites to serve, even though we may not be able to locate that which we are hoping to serve. So this is just a part of my nature and I think everybody else's nature to offer oneself at the critical moment when the emergency becomes articulate. It's only then that we can locate that willingness to serve.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Regret
Suffering, violent suffering, seems to be something that corresponds with something that we experience.Collection: Suffering
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.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Song
Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique.Collection: Unique
I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk.Collection: Drunk
It is painful to recall a past intensity, to estimate your distance from the Belsen heap, to make your peace with numbers. Just to get up each morning is to make a kind of peace.Collection: Peace
And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussionCollection: Inspiration
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 .Collection: Lying
Seriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that.Collection: Opposites
A song, you know, you've got a tempo. You know,you've got something that is moving swiftly. You can't stop it, you know? Andit's designed to move swiftly from, you know, mouth to mouth, heart to heart,where a poem really speaks to something that has no time and that is - it's acompletely different perception.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Spiritual
All the lousy little poets coming around trying to sound like Charles Manson.Collection: Art
First we take Manhattan, then we take BerlinCollection: Manhattan
Who could have foretold the heart grows old from touching othersCollection: Heart
You have money, fame, youth, beauty, talent. That's a good start... for feeling good.Collection: Feel Good
Seriousness is the deepest pleasure we have.Collection: Pleasure
His vision was just outstanding. If you think of him in the same way as Pele then you would come close.Collection: Thinking
Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession.Collection: Nature
The obstacles are great and the suffering is great and people have got to make a living.Collection: People
I won't comment on what Bob Dylan said, but I will comment on his receiving the Nobel Prize, which to me is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.Collection: Mountain
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, Everybody knows that the war is over, Everybody knows the good guys lost.Collection: War
She was made of flesh and eyelashes.Collection: Eyelashes
It's you my love, you who are the stranger.Collection: Love You
I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.Collection: Important
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.Collection: Thinking
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 .Collection: Children
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.Collection: About Life
If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.Collection: Ocean
I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.Collection: Reality
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.Collection: Firsts
Maybe there’s a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you.Collection: Broken Heart
It’s the notion that there is no perfection – that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.Collection: Perfection
I loved you for a long, long time I know this love is real It don’t matter how it all went wrong That don’t change the way I feel And I can’t believe that time’s Gonna heal this wound I’m speaking of There ain’t no cure for love.Collection: Real
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they’re paid for it.Collection: Fun