Latest Leonard Cohen Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• this is every musician's dream, to stand in front of an audience and not have to prove your credentials.

  Leonard Cohen

  Dream, Prove, Audience

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I do cherish those moments when I can just relax in the hotel room. Because there are a lot of details that have to be taken care of aside from just getting up onstage. You're dealing with a number of human beings whose well-being and safety you're concerned about. There are people I like to meet and talk to in the crew and the band.

  Leonard Cohen

  Taken, People, Safety

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Anyone who's been a heavy drinker and heavy smoker and has the good future to survive that and give it up knows what a very different kind of daily existence one has. I was smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a day. And I was drinking heavily on tours.

  Leonard Cohen

  Couple, Drinking, Giving

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I've never thought of myself as a singer anyway. . . I've been free from those considerations because so many people over the years told me I don't have a voice. I kind of bought that. I never thought that much about it to begin with. I knew I didn't have one of the great voices. As my Damon Runyanesque lawyer used to say, "none of you guys can sing. If I want to hear singing, I'll go to the Metropolitan Opera."

  Leonard Cohen

  People, Guy, Singing

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• It's inappropriate for an elderly chap to register, you know, authentically, his feelings, you know, because they really can be interpreted. So you have to get quite covert as you get older. Or you have to find some avuncular way, you know, of responding.

  Leonard Cohen

  Elderly, Feelings, Way

  "Leonard Cohen On Poetry, Music And Why He Left The Zen Monastery". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 21, 2016.

• Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everybody knows the captain lied. Everybody got this broken feeling, like their father or their dog just died. Everybody talking to their pockets. Everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long-stem rose. Everybody knows.

  Leonard Cohen

  Dog, Father, Talking

  "Leonard Cohen On Poetry, Music And Why He Left The Zen Monastery". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 21, 2016.

• I would like to study Judaism. I feel that my own Jewish education was really quite superficial from a certain point of view. Although I think the values were very clear and were presented very clearly, there's - there were aspects of the whole tradition that were not emphasized. And, you know, I've come to those areas myself as I've grown older. But I would like to go deeper.

  Leonard Cohen

  Thinking, Views, Study

  Source: www.npr.org

• I'm never sure why I do anything, to tell you the truth.

  Leonard Cohen

  Source: www.npr.org

• I think that really what our training, what our culture, our religious institutions, our educational and cultural institutions should be about is preparing the heart for that journey outside of the cage of the ribs.

  Leonard Cohen

  Religious, Educational, Heart

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• We all need that experience of forgetting who you are. Forgetting who you are is such a delicious experience and so frightening that we're in this conflicted predicament.

  Leonard Cohen

  Needs, Forget, Predicaments

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think that all the spiritual training is just to be able to allow you to experience this from a slightly different perspective - one that's a little more stabilized.

  Leonard Cohen

  Spiritual, Thinking, Perspective

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Your heart opens and of course you're completely panicked because you're used to guarding this organ with your life.

  Leonard Cohen

  Heart, Guarding, Used

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I don't think there's any difference between a crush and profound love. I think the experience is that you dissolve your sentries and your battalions for a moment and you really do see that there is this unfixed free-flowing energy of emotion and thought between people, that it really is there.

  Leonard Cohen

  Crush, Thinking, Differences

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• When you're younger, you do have that thing that you were talking about where the mouth goes dry. I mean you have reactions, and you do fall in love.

  Leonard Cohen

  Falling In Love, Mean, Talking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• To keep our hearts open is probably the most urgent responsibility you have as you get older.

  Leonard Cohen

  Heart, Responsibility, Urgent

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I see people allowing their lives to diminish, to become shallow, so they can't enjoy the deep wells of experience. Maybe it's always been this way, when the heart tends to shut down. If only the heart shut down and there were no repercussions, it would be O.K., but when the heart shuts down, the whole system goes into a kind of despair that is intolerable.

  Leonard Cohen

  Heart, People, Despair

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Seriousness is the deepest pleasure we have.

  Leonard Cohen

  Pleasure, Seriousness

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Seriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that.

  Leonard Cohen

  Opposites, Seriousness, Renunciation

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think there's an appetite for seriousness. Seriousness is voluptuous, and very few people have allowed themselves the luxury of it.

  Leonard Cohen

  Thinking, Luxury, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.

  Leonard Cohen

  Looks, Serious, Emphasis

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• We've got to temper anything we say with that. On the other hand, you've got to be serious about what you do. And you've got to understand the price you pay for frivolity or just for greed - it's a very high price, especially if you're involved in this sacred material, which is about the human heart and human desire and human tragedy.

  Leonard Cohen

  Heart, Hands, Greed

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It's easy to look down from the summit you've reached, or even the summit I've reached, and talk about the responsibilities of the artist, but most people are just trying to get their foot in the door and make a living.

  Leonard Cohen

  Responsibility, Artist, Doors

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The obstacles are great and the suffering is great and people have got to make a living.

  Leonard Cohen

  People, Suffering, Obstacles

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Just to get serious about this thing, you know. One has to be compassionate. It's true that people are up against things, economically and emotionally.

  Leonard Cohen

  People, Serious, Compassionate

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The psychologists are valiantly trying to provide us with answers, the religious people are trying to provide us with answers. I think it properly falls on the cultural workers to investigate this predicament with a little less concern for the marketplace and a little more concern for their higher calling.

  Leonard Cohen

  Religious, Fall, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com