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" 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. "

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" I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn't begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like 'Hey Jude' that I could appreciate. But they didn't seem to be essential to the kind of nourishment that I craved. "

Leonard Cohen

Kind

Devotion

" I had a very messianic childhood. "

" We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what? "

" I have a deep tribal sense. I grew up in a synagogue that my ancestors built. I sat in the third row. My family was decent. They were good people; they were handshake people. So I never had a sense of rebellion. "

" My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs. "

" As we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I'd get a Grammy Award. In fact, I was always touched by the modesty of their interest. "

" Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Leonard Cohen

Know

Got

" There are writers who are great visionaries, who can depict huge movements - things like that. They're the great writers. I'm just the other kind. "

Leonard Cohen

Things

Other

" At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It's a cliche, but it's underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable. "

" We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it. "

" This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have the sense that we can't live without love. That life has very little meaning without love. "

" Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. "

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

" In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress. "

" 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.' "

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

Leonard Cohen

Running

Get

" I never had the sense that there was an end: that there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot. "

" Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing. "

" Success is survival. "

" Torah values are the ones that inform my life. "

" I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together. "

" Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song. "

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

" Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. "

" A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love. "

" My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the 10,000 nights I spent alone. "

" Music is the emotional life of most people. "

" There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion. "