Leonard Cohen quote: "The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It's useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way."

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

At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challeng...
LEONARD COHEN

This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have t...
LEONARD COHEN

If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often.
LEONARD COHEN

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

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass d...
LEONARD COHEN

My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.
LEONARD COHEN

Success is survival.
LEONARD COHEN

We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. A...
LEONARD COHEN

We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're p...
LEONARD COHEN

When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That'...
LEONARD COHEN

There were times that I thought I was good looking.
LEONARD COHEN

I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd...
LEONARD COHEN

I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to ...
LEONARD COHEN

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

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
LEONARD COHEN

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having t...
LEONARD COHEN

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everythi...
LEONARD COHEN

It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple
LEONARD COHEN

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in ever...
LEONARD COHEN

There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
LEONARD COHEN

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language h...
LEONARD COHEN

I know that there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do...
LEONARD COHEN

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person ...
LEONARD COHEN

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
LEONARD COHEN

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does ...
LEONARD COHEN

I have nothing against the Queen of England. Even in my heart I never resented her for not being Jac...
LEONARD COHEN

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul...
LEONARD COHEN

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

The ages of seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled th...
LEONARD COHEN

He lay beside her, an insomniac with visions of vastness. He thought of desert stretches so huge no ...
LEONARD COHEN

Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep ...
LEONARD COHEN

What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are ...
LEONARD COHEN

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense t...
LEONARD COHEN

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

To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the co...
LEONARD COHEN

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense ...
LEONARD COHEN

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship ...
LEONARD COHEN

Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands ou...
LEONARD COHEN

I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me...
LEONARD COHEN

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly des...
LEONARD COHEN

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when t...
LEONARD COHEN

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

I like life on the road. It's a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you're ...
LEONARD COHEN

Music is the emotional life of most people.
LEONARD COHEN

This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments ...
LEONARD COHEN

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

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

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chantin...
LEONARD COHEN

My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my e...
LEONARD COHEN

Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chor...
LEONARD COHEN

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. ...
LEONARD COHEN

I can make a couple of good sandwiches: tuna salad and chopped egg salad. And Greek bean soup. I was...
LEONARD COHEN

I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don't write the songs anyhow. So if y...
LEONARD COHEN

I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish...
LEONARD COHEN

I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, b...
LEONARD COHEN

... i didn't fall in love of course
it's never up to you
but she was walking back and fort...
LEONARD COHEN

There are writers who are great visionaries, who can depict huge movements - things like that. They&...
LEONARD COHEN

Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is...
LEONARD COHEN

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only...
LEONARD COHEN

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person ...
LEONARD COHEN

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when ...
LEONARD COHEN

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when...
LEONARD COHEN

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when...
LEONARD COHEN

Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is...
LEONARD COHEN

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, he said to me, "You must not ask for so much." And a pr...
LEONARD COHEN

As we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I...
LEONARD COHEN

As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to b...
LEONARD COHEN

I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn't begrudge th...
LEONARD COHEN

If only my genitals didn't float
When I relaxed in the bath
And we both looked down and we...
LEONARD COHEN

There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their problems. I guess they feel I...
LEONARD COHEN

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild o...
LEONARD COHEN

One of the reasons I'm on tour is to meet people. I consider it a reconnaissance. You know, I co...
LEONARD COHEN

You go to Heaven once you've been to Hell
LEONARD COHEN

Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somew...
LEONARD COHEN

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand ...
LEONARD COHEN

The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to co...
LEONARD COHEN

You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you're actually going...
LEONARD COHEN

I have a deep tribal sense. I grew up in a synagogue that my ancestors built. I sat in the third row...
LEONARD COHEN

Then I start to struggle
With a feeble song
Which will overcome me
Many miles from ho...
LEONARD COHEN

Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
LEONARD COHEN

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy, golde...
LEONARD COHEN

I don't have any sense or urgency about any of my writing, actually. I don't think mankind w...
LEONARD COHEN

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everyb...
LEONARD COHEN

He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have ...
LEONARD COHEN

so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...

So ring the bells that still can...
LEONARD COHEN

My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night penci...
LEONARD COHEN

Ett ärr är vad som uppstår när ordet blir kött.
LEONARD COHEN

BREAVMAN KNOWS a girl named Shell whose ears were pierced so she could wear the long filigree earrin...
LEONARD COHEN

A rat is more alive than a turtle.
A turtle is slow, cold, mechanical, nearly a toy, a shell wi...
LEONARD COHEN

Sjeća se užasnih šutnji i plača koji nije mogao razumjeti. Ništa nije mogao učiniti, a najmanj...
LEONARD COHEN

Comic books, movies, radio programmes centered their entertainment around the fact of torture. With ...
LEONARD COHEN

He never described himself as a poet or his work as poetry. The fact that the lines do not come to t...
LEONARD COHEN

I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling...
LEONARD COHEN

Coroner's inquest: death by drowning. And he hasn't been to the sea-shore in ten years.
LEONARD COHEN

He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and the...
LEONARD COHEN

Dear Hitler
Take away the torches I'm not guilty I had to have this
LEONARD COHEN

I'm afraid to live any place but in expectation. I'm no life-risk.
LEONARD COHEN

I must go now."
"Stay up the night with me! We'll go to the fish market. There are great noble ...
LEONARD COHEN

Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached.
LEONARD COHEN

It doesn't matter how anything happens.
LEONARD COHEN

Your body will never be familiar.
LEONARD COHEN

She was made of flesh and eyelashes.
LEONARD COHEN

Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else."

Then let's be quiet together.
LEONARD COHEN

He knew that hair couldn't feel; he kissed her hair.
LEONARD COHEN

Deprivation is the mother of poetry.
LEONARD COHEN

I'm planning a catastrophe.
LEONARD COHEN

As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.
LEONARD COHEN

I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in ...
LEONARD COHEN

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

Well I've seen your flag on the marble arch and love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a ...
LEONARD COHEN

I taught him how to dress. He taught me how to live forever.
LEONARD COHEN

I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain...
LEONARD COHEN

This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industr...
LEONARD COHEN

All the Men will be sailors then, untill the sea shall free them.
LEONARD COHEN

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That'...
LEONARD COHEN

Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly...
LEONARD COHEN

It looks like freedom but it feels like death, it's something in between I guess. It's closing time.
LEONARD COHEN

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore
LEONARD COHEN

I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very ...
LEONARD COHEN

How bitter were
the Prozac pills
of the last
few hundred mornings
LEONARD COHEN

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you...
LEONARD COHEN

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to cal...
LEONARD COHEN

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
wome...
LEONARD COHEN

The flowers that I left in the ground,
that I did not gather for you,
today I bring them...
LEONARD COHEN

Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.
LEONARD COHEN

I will starve till prophets find me,
I will bleed till angels bind me,
Still I sing till c...
LEONARD COHEN

I never had huge amounts of money when I was young. I had huge amounts of fame, and I always had the...
LEONARD COHEN

Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine an...
LEONARD COHEN

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

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

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everyb...
LEONARD COHEN

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

As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand...
LEONARD COHEN

Torah values are the ones that inform my life.
LEONARD COHEN

Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To M...
LEONARD COHEN

Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when y...
LEONARD COHEN

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

My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the ...
LEONARD COHEN

A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go.
I tidied up the kitchenette;
...
LEONARD COHEN

I like being the underdog so they don't expect what's going to happen. It pushes me to work ...
KAWHI LEONARD

There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or o...
ELMORE LEONARD

The convergence of the Rhone and Saone. Paul Bocuse. The birthplace of cinema. Chateauneuf-du-Pape j...
LEONARD SLATKIN

I'm not a builder of buildings, I'm a builder of collections.
LEONARD LAUDER

That which is alike will be called same. That which is not same is different.
LEONARD BLOOMFIELD

Professionally, I was at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did lots of things there, and then I won...
LYDIA LEONARD

Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual...
LEONARD SUSSKIND

During one of my early seminars, there were a bunch of seminar junkies there.
LEONARD ORR

Obviously, I like guys that can defend other positions. Draymond Green is doing a great job with Gol...
KAWHI LEONARD

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

The book tour has been really interesting and very gratifying. I have not book toured before. I'...
LEONARD NIMOY

Non-human primates spend hours a day grooming each other. And with humans, touching is also importan...
LEONARD MLODINOW

My folks came to U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, w...
LEONARD NIMOY

When judging a product, we rarely have exhaustive scientific data to go by. As a result, if we are t...
LEONARD MLODINOW

If you kneel before God, you will stand before men.
LEONARD RAVENHILL

Psychopaths... people who know the differences between right and wrong, but don't give a shit. That'...
ELMORE LEONARD

Live Long and Prosper
LEONARD NIMOY

If I meet God, I hope she's female. I'm touched by the power of women. I'm married to a feminist. An...
LEONARD NIMOY

I'm only human, and I have no doubt Spock will outlive me by many years. I can only hope that, once ...
LEONARD NIMOY

I AM CONVINCED

I am convinced
That if all mankind
Could only gather together LEONARD NIMOY

The miracle is this - the more we share, the more we have.
LEONARD NIMOY

Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.
LEONARD NIMOY

It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.
ELMORE LEONARD

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all ...
ELMORE LEONARD

Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and comm...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.
GEORGE LEONARD

Men give advice; God gives guidance.
LEONARD RAVENHILL

In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The be...
GEORGE LEONARD

Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
LEONARD BRANDWEIN

Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick.
GEORGE LEONARD

â€œThe church that is man-managed instead of God-governed is doomed to failure. A ministry that...
LEONARD RAVENHILL

It takes as much imagination to create debt as to create income.
LEONARD ORR

While we often huddle in groups of like-minded people, those with faith blaze a trail that threatens...
LEONARD RAVENHILL

The growth of affluence, the growth of education, has led to a shortage of morons.
LEONARD NEAL

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, ...
GEORGE LEONARD

History tells us more than we want to know about what is wrong with man, and we can hardly turn a pa...
GEORGE LEONARD

If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twen...
STEW LEONARD

The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.
GLORIA LEONARD

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must ...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, a...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

When the thunder rumbles,
Now the age of gold is dead.
When the dreams we've clung to
Tryin...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of th...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

A customer who complains is my best friend.
STEW LEONARD

Rule number one: The customer is always right. Rule number two: If the customer is wrong, see rule n...
STEVE LEONARD

I know nothing about sex, because I was always married.
GLORIA LEONARD

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of th...
LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Clarity affords focus.
THOMAS LEONARD

Touch seems to be such an important tool for enhancing social cooperation and affiliation that we ha...
LEONARD MLODINOW

My wife and I are affiliated with a temple here in Los Angeles. We feel very close to the congregati...
LEONARD NIMOY

A lot of my research time is spent daydreaming - telling an imaginary admiring audience of laymen ho...
LEONARD SUSSKIND

It was a great feeling to be named an All-Star starter, to know that my hard work is paying off and ...
KAWHI LEONARD

Well, first of all the Dominion Bureau of Statistics made a survey in the spring of 1970, which show...
LEONARD WOODCOCK

If tomorrow all of America were to become paternalistic, we would beat the Japanese every day of the...
LEONARD LAUDER

It seems hopelessly improbable that any particular rules accidentally led to the miracle of intellig...
LEONARD SUSSKIND

'Subliminal' is about how we misinterpret our behavior because we're unaware of what our...
LEONARD MLODINOW

Boston was a great city to grow up in, and it probably still is. We were surrounded by two very impo...
LEONARD NIMOY

Our success in this matter is important to all Americans. Whether you are in the forest land busines...
LEONARD BOSWELL

The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It's useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way.

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Leonard Cohen

The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It's useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way.

Leonard Cohen

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