Explore the quotes and the life of this Grammy winner, Hall of Fame inductee and legendary musician. Leonard Cohen died in 2016 at the age of 82 after a storied career. He was an active musician late into his life, and released 3 albums in the last 4 years before his death.

His music spanned many genres and inspired and moved multiple generations of fans. One thing you may not have known about Cohen is that he wasn’t just a musician – he was also a poet and a novelist.

On this page, we hope to celebrate Cohen’s legendary career and incredible life by offering you his greatest, most interesting quotes – from the man himself.

Cohen was a prolific musician – and to honor his life and his work, here are some other interesting pages about musicians or music that we have on the site:

Without further ado, here are the best Leonard Cohen Quotes. We hope you enjoy and honor his memory alongside us.

He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

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

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

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

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.

Here’s to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don’t even care.

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 .

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.

I have tried in my way to be free.

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

My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.

It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.

The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.

I’m planning a catastrophe.

Do not be a magician – be magic!

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world’s excuse for being ugly.

Deprivation is the mother of poetry.

…even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.

When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.

We are ugly but we have the music.

Your body will never be familiar.

It’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.