Leonard Cohen Art Quotations

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.

My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name.

It’s a pity if someone… has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart’s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it.

Well, I've been waiting, I was sure we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for I think it's time to board another Please understand, I never had a secret chart to get me to the heart of this or any other matter

I have nothing against the Queen of England. Even in my heart I never resented her for not being Jackie Kennedy. She is, to my mind, a very gallant lady, victimized by whoever it is who designs the tops of her uniforms.

Who could have foretold the heart grows old from touching others

He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire.

From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain we rise to play a greater part this is the faith from which we start.

When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.

This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industry: a business manager and professional advisers exploit an immensely talented artist's loyalty and trust through greed, self-dealing, concealment, knowing misrepresentation and reckless disregard for professional fiduciary duties.

The art of longing's over, and it's never coming back.

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.

All the lousy little poets coming around trying to sound like Charles Manson.

Poetry is a verdict rather than an intention.

No one masters the heart.

Maybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you.

Why don't you try to do without him, why don't you try to live alone? Do you really need his hands for your passion? Do you really need his heart for your throne? Do you need his labor for your baby? Do you need his beast for the bone? Do you need to hold a leash to be a lady? I know that you can make it, you can make it on your own.

Well, you know, there's depression and depression. What I mean by depression in my own case is that depression isn't just the blues. It's not just like I have a hangover in the weekend ... the girl didn't show up or something like that. It isn't that. It's not really depression, it's a kind of mental violence which stops you from functioning properly from one moment to the next. You lose something somewhere and suddenly you're gripped by a kind of angst of the heart and of the spirit...

I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.

And sometimes when the night is slow The wretched and the meek We gather up our hearts and go A Thousand Kisses Deep.

And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.

Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee

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

He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

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.