Guess quote

Leonard Cohen [1934-2016] Canadian

Rank: 4
Musician, Singer-songwriter

Leonard Norman Cohen, CC GOQ was a Canadian singer, songwriter, musician, poet, novelist, and painter. His work mostly explored religion, politics, isolation, sexuality, and personal relationships.

Life, Poetry, Work, Dreams, Good, Faith, Great, Love, Music, Time, Truth

Quote	Tags	Rank
There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.		101
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.	Life, Poetry	102
Music is the emotional life of most people.	Life, Music	103
When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do.		104
Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.		105
The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.		106
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.	Life, Love	107
We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup.	Life	108
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.		109
When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.	Time	110
My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.	Great	111
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.	Work	112
I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.		113
We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?	Work	114
If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often.	Good	115
I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.	Poetry, Work	116
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.	Faith	117
In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.	Dreams, Good, Truth	118
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.		119
Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.		120
I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.		121
I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.		122
Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.		123
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.		124
And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.		125
I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.		126
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.		201
I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog.		202
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.	Poetry	203
Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!		204
My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs.		205
As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line.		206
I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.		207
I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.	Poetry	208
I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune.		209
Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.		210
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.	Dreams	211
Success is survival.		212
I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.		213
I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.		214
I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.		215
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.		216
A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.		217
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.		218
I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.		219
And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.		220
Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song.		221

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