Top 250 Leonard Cohen Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

152. “Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful, give or take a night or two.”

— Leonard Cohen

153. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

154. “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make things cheap.”

— Leonard Cohen

155. “I ache in the places where I used to play...”

— Leonard Cohen

156. “Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace.”

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

158. “In our rags of light, all dressed to kill.”

— Leonard Cohen

159. “Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it’s all around us, painted like a target, red, white and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull’s eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don’t forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colours that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the ship of State like a pirate’s sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present.”

— Leonard Cohen

160. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

161. “He knew that hair couldn’t feel; he kissed her hair.”

— Leonard Cohen

162. “A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then it’s time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I’m wanted at the traffic-jam. They’re saving me a seat.”

— Leonard Cohen

163. “Do not believe the truth. The truth is tiny compared to what you have to do.”

— Leonard Cohen

164. “I am this thing that needs to sing.”

— Leonard Cohen

165. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

166. “And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion.”

— Leonard Cohen

167. “Now, I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m a great musicologist, but I’m a lot better than what I was described as for a long, long time; you know, people said I only knew three chords when I knew five.”

— Leonard Cohen

168. “We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they’re paid for it.”

— Leonard Cohen

169. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

170. “Don’t write about ideas... write about convictions of the heart.”

— Leonard Cohen

171. “I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance.”

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

173. “I write to murder the selves that whisper untruths to me.”

— Leonard Cohen

174. “Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time.”

— Leonard Cohen

175. “Refine your longing here, in the small silver music of her preparations, under the low-built shelter of repentance.”

— Leonard Cohen

176. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

177. “Everytime you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory.”

— Leonard Cohen

178. “History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison Of all they want to keep.”

— Leonard Cohen

179. “It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.”

— Leonard Cohen

180. “I dreamed about you baby. It was just the other night. Most of you was naked Ah, but some of you was light.”

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

183. “I finally broke into the prison I found my place in the chain Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.”

— Leonard Cohen

184. “How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings.”

— Leonard Cohen

185. “At first first nothing will happen to us and later on it will happen to us again.”

— Leonard Cohen

186. “I couldn’t feel so I learned to touch.”

— Leonard Cohen

187. “Even without the mushroom cloud still I would have hated Listen I would have done the same things even if there were no death I will not be held like a drunkard under the cold tap of facts I refuse the universal alibi.”

— Leonard Cohen

188. “Who could have foretold the heart grows old from touching others.”

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

190. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

191. “The duty of lovers is to tarnish the Golden Rule.”

— Leonard Cohen

192. “Coroner’s inquest: death by drowning. And he hasn’t been to the sea-shore in ten years.”

— Leonard Cohen

193. “A teacher I once had told me that the older you get, the lonelier you become and the deeper the love you need. Loneliness creates an appetite for deeper love, and the entire predicament deepens. And as a result of suffering, your capacity to love deeply increases.”

— Leonard Cohen

194. “Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.”

— Leonard Cohen

195. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen

196. “I guess you go for nothing, if you really want to go that far.”

— Leonard Cohen

197. “She was made of flesh and eyelashes.”

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

199. “I want history to jump on Canada’s spine with sharp skates.”

— Leonard Cohen

200. “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.”

— Leonard Cohen