Leonard Cohen Quotes

To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself.

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

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.

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

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 am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.

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

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.

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