Amy Fields > Amy's Quotes

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Leonard Cohen

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

“And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.”
― Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. ”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care”
― Leonard Cohen

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love ”
― Leonard Cohen

“Never make a decision when you need to pee.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“In My Secret Life"

"I saw you this morning,
you were moving so fast.
Can't seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much,
there's no one in sight.
And we're still making love
In my secret life.
I smile when I am angry,
I cheat and I lie,
I do what I have to do
to get by,
In my secret life.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .”
― Leonard Cohen

“A heavy burden lifted from my soul,
I heard that love was out of my control.”
― Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

“There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical atmosphere more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact. The poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic passion, let alone disclosing the inherent mystical qualities of the material world.

Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the "illogical" line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and bewildering assaults of culture. Undoubtedly, it is to his lyrical mastery that his prestigious colleagues now pay tribute. Yet, there may be something else. As various, as distinct, as rewarding as each of their expressions are, there can still be heard in their individual interpretations the distant echo of Cohen's own voice, for it is his singing voice as well as his writing pen that has spawned these songs.

It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone.

It is a penitent's voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toasts -- spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women -- and cataloging their sometimes hazardous charms. Nobody can say the word "naked" as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been.

Finally, the actual persona of their creator may be said to haunt these songs, although details of his private lifestyle can be only surmised. A decade ago, a teacher who called himself Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh came up with the name "Zorba the Buddha" to describe the ideal modern man: A contemplative man who maintains a strict devotional bond with cosmic energies, yet is completely at home in the physical realm. Such a man knows the value of the dharma and the value of the deutschmark, knows how much to tip a waiter in a Paris nightclub and how many times to bow in a Kyoto shrine, a man who can do business when business is necessary, allow his mind to enter a pine cone, or dance in wild abandon if moved by the tune. Refusing to shun beauty, this Zorba the Buddha finds in ripe pleasures not a contradiction but an affirmation of the spiritual self. Doesn't he sound a lot like Leonard Cohen?

We have been led to picture Cohen spending his mornings meditating in Armani suits, his afternoons wrestling the muse, his evenings sitting in cafes were he eats, drinks and speaks soulfully but flirtatiously with the pretty larks of the street. Quite possibly this is a distorted portrait. The apocryphal, however, has a special kind of truth.

It doesn't really matter. What matters here is that after thirty years, L. Cohen is holding court in the lobby of the whirlwind, and that giants have gathered to pay him homage. To him -- and to us -- they bring the offerings they have hammered from his iron, his lead, his nitrogen, his gold.”
― Tom Robbins

“In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me...
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear”
― Leonard Cohen

“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.”
― Leonard Cohen

“My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in places I used to play.
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on.
I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.”
― Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love

“even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was, "Hallelujah.”
― Leonard Cohen

“My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“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.”
― Leonard Cohen

“If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.”
― Leonard Cohen

“How bitter were
the Prozac pills
of the last
few hundred mornings”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

“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

“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.”
― Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

“a kite is a victim you are sure of.
you love it because it pulls.”
― Leonard Cohen

“It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”
― Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs

“Now suzanne takes you hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.”
― Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs

“It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”
― Leonard Cohen