Leonard Cohen Quotes About Songs

Quotes about: Songs

• You live your life as if it's real.......a thousand kisses deep

  Leonard Cohen

  Life, Song, Real

  Song: A Thousand Kisses Deep, Album: Ten New Songs, 2001

• There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

  Leonard Cohen

  Meaningful, Song, Baby

  "My favourite word in songwriting history is 'that" by Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2007.

• Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Humans, Human Activity

  Leonard Cohen (2014). “Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen”, p.341, Omnibus Press

• When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Artist, Touched

• 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?

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Hard Work, Writing

  "Leonard Cohen: 'All I've got to put in a song is my own experience'" by Dorian Lynskey, www.theguardian.com. January 19, 2012.

• I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Rock And Roll, Done

  Song: Bird On The Wire, 1969

• No one's ever done one of my songs badly. People say to me, "God, so-and-so wrecked that song." Well, I'm unaware of it. Anybody doing one of my tunes has earned my gratitude, and I don't get that many covers where I have the luxury to choose.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Gratitude, Luxury

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Men, World

• If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. It’s a mysterious condition. It’s much like the life of a Catholic nun. You’re married to a mystery.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Catholic, Mysterious

  Leonard Cohen (2014). “Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen”, p.348, Omnibus Press

• Suzanne had a room on a waterfront street in the port of Montreal. Everything happened just as it was put down. She was the wife of a man I knew. Her hospitality was immaculate. Some months later I sang it for Judy Collins over the telephone. The publishing rights were lost in New York City, but it is probably appropriate that I don't own this song. Just the other day I heard some people singing it on a ship in the Caspian Sea.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, New York, Men

• I'd written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: 'Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don't listen to me'.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, Wings

• I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, People

  Leonard Cohen (2014). “Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen”, p.346, Omnibus Press

• I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Art, Reality

  "Leonard Cohen at 80". Interview with Mark Ellen, www.thetimes.co.uk. September 19, 2014.

• 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

  Song, Crazy, Hair

  Leonard Cohen (2008). “The Lyrics of Leonard Cohen: Enhanced Edition”, p.251, Omnibus Press

• I know there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do. And before this great force, which is greater than any government I stand in awe and I kneel in respect and it is to this great judgment that I dedicate this next song...

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Eye, Government

  Leonard Cohen (2014). “Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen”, p.221, Omnibus Press

• The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, Long

  "Leonard Cohen: giving Nobel to Bob Dylan like 'pinning medal on Everest'". www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2016.

• As soon as anybody does one of my songs, I rejoice. This particular case of all these great singers doing my work - the implications are very rich and the temptation to think of the outcome of these masses of the mainstream injecting my work into the marketplace, it's a very sweet speculation.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Sweet, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, Long

• Part of the shabbiness of our culture, if indeed it is shabby, is that it doesn't seem to prepare people. With all the songs about love and all the movies and all the books, there doesn't seem to be any way that we can prepare the human heart for this experience.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Book, Heart

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I hope we [with Patrick Leonard] can come up with something orchestral with some spoken material. And I also, God willing, hope that perhaps another record of songs also might emerge, but one never knows.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Records, Might

• I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Events, Dishes

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

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Bottom Of The Barrel, Trying

• I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Blessed, Quality

• A song, you know, you've got a tempo. You know,you've got something that is moving swiftly. You can't stop it, you know? Andit's designed to move swiftly from, you know, mouth to mouth, heart to heart,where a poem really speaks to something that has no time and that is - it's acompletely different perception.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Moving, Heart

• I would say the hummingbird really deserves the royalties on [some of my songs].

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Royalty, Hummingbirds

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