Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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.' "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Leonard Cohen

Family

People

Good

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I can make a couple of good sandwiches: tuna salad and chopped egg salad. And Greek bean soup. I was a cook for my old Zen master for many years. So there were two or three dishes that he liked, you know. Teriyaki salmon, a few things. "

" I like life on the road. It's a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you're in a motorcycle gang. "

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

" 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

" Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act. "

" As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one's life or one's work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now. "

" I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. "

" Success is survival. "

" I was born in a suit. "

" And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I continually blacken pages and scribble away, so I always have a number of songs that are half-finished. "

" 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. "

" I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability. "

" Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true. "

" 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. "

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