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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.

-Leonard Cohen

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Out Of The Thousands

Leonard Cohen

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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.

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You Who Wish To Conquer Pain, You Must Learn What Makes One Kind.

In Dreams The Truth Is Learned That All Good Works Are Done In The Absence Of A Caress.

His Vision Was Just Outstanding. If You Think Of Him In The Same Way As Pele Then You Would Come Close.

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.

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.

All The Lousy Little Poets Coming Around Trying To Sound Like Charles Manson.

I'm Neither Left Or Right. I'm Just Staying Home Tonight, Getting Lost In That Hopeless Little Screen.

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.

And Here You Are Hurried, And Here You Are Gone; And Here Is The Love, That It's All Built Upon.

Love Is A Fire/it Burns Everyone/it Disfigures Everyone/it Is The World's Excuse For Being Ugly.

The Maestro Says It's Mozart But It Sounds Like Bubble Gum When You're Waiting For The Miracle To Come.

Maybe The Culture Is [particularly] Shabby Now. Maybe It's Because I'm Over Sixty, That I Can Feel That About Everything.

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.

First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin

Seven To Eleven Is A Huge Chunk Of Life, Full Of Dulling And Forgetting. It Is Fabled That We Slowly Lose The Gift Of Speech With Animals, That Birds No Longer Visit Our Windowsills To Converse. As Our Eyes Grow Accustomed To Sight They Armor Themselves Against Wonder.

I Would Like To Remind The Management That The Drinks Are Watered And The Hat-check Girl Has Syphilis And The Band Is Composed Of Former Ss Monsters However Since It Is New Year's Eve And I Have Lip Cancer I Will Place My Paper Hat On My Concussion And Dance

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.

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.

It's Hard To Be Serious About So Many Things. [look At The Whole Emphasis] On The Charts, If You're A Songwriter.

I Fought Against The Bottle, But I Had To Do It Drunk. Took My Diamond To The Pawn Shop, But That Don't Make It Junk.

Although Only One Man May Be Receiving The Favors Of A Woman, All Men In Her Presence Are Warmed. That's The Great Generosity Of Women And The Great Generosity Of The Creator Who Worked It Out Is That There Are No Unilateral Agreements On Sexuality.

I Felt Like If Any Two People Had Any Kind Of Sexual Affinity For Each Other They Had To Sleep With Each Other Immediately, Otherwise It Was A Terrible Betrayal And Waste...fortunately, I'm Relieved Of Those Obsessions Now. It's Really Wonderful. It's Really Wonderful Not Feeling You Have To Sleep With Everybody.

I Lit A Thin Green Candle To Make You Jealous Of Me, But The Room Just Filled Up With Mosquitoes.

How Can I Begin Anything New With All Of Yesterday In Me?

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.

Love Is Not A Victory March

And I Had Not Much Of A Voice. I Didn't Play That Great Guitar Either.

I Can't Run No More With That Lawless Crowd While The Killers In High Places Say Their Prayers Out Loud. But They've Summoned, They've Summoned Up A Thundercloud And They're Going To Hear From Me. Ring The Bells That Still Can Ring Forget Your Perfect Offering There Is A Crack In Everything That's How The Light Gets In.

[patrick Leonard] Is Such A Magnificent Composer. I Don't Think There Is Anybody Working Today With Those Kind Of Skills That Could Translate One Of My Tunes Into That Really Beautiful Chamber Music.

Everybody Knows That The Dice Are Loaded, Everybody Rolls With Their Fingers Crossed, Everybody Knows That The War Is Over, Everybody Knows The Good Guys Lost.

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.

I Dreamed About You Baby. It Was Just The Other Night. Most Of You Was Naked Ah, But Some Of You Was Light.

Your Servant Here, He Has Been Told To Say It Clear, To Say It Cold: It's Over, It Ain't Going Any Further And Now The Wheels Of Heaven Stop You Feel The Devil's Riding Crop Get Ready For The Future: It Is Murder

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.

I Greet You From The Other Side Of Sorrow And Despair, With A Love So Vast And Shattered It Will Reach You Everywhere.

This Mental Space Is Occupied And Everything Is Mine.

Poetry Is A Verdict Rather Than An Intention.

We Are So Small Between The Stars, So Large Against The Sky.

In The Broken Places, The Light Shines Through.

Oh The Sisters Of Mercy, They Are Not Departed Or Gone.

A Poem Has A Certain - A Different Time. For Instance, A Poem Is A Very Private Experience, And It Doesn't Have A Driving Tempo. In Other Words, You Know, You Can Go Back And Forward; You Can Comeback; You Can Linger. You Know, It's A Completely Different Time Reference.

I Listen To The Radio And I Like All Kinds Of Music, You Know, But I Like To Hear From People Who Have Been There. Hank Williams Has Been There.

Only In Canada Could Somebody With A Voice Like Mine Win 'vocalist Of The Year'.

Deprivation Is The Mother Of Poetry.

Shouldering Your Loneliness Like A Gun That You Will Not Learn To Aim, You Stumble Into This Movie House Then You Climb, You Climb Into The Frame.

She Was Made Of Flesh And Eyelashes.

I Loved You When You Opened Like A Lily To The Heat; You See I’m Just Another Snowman Standing In The Rain And Sleet Who Loved You With His Frozen Love, His Second Hand Physique, With All He Is And All He Was A Thousand Kisses Deep.

When You're Not Feeling Holy, Your Loneliness Says That You've Sinned.

You Lose Your Grip, And Then You Slip Into The Masterpiece.

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.

The Dream" "o I Had Such A Wonderful Dream, She Said. I Dreamed You Made Love To Me. At Last, He Said To Himself, The Spirit Has Taken Up Some Of The Heavy Work.

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.

It Doesn't Matter What You Do Because It's Going To Happen Anyway.

A Community Is An Alibi For The Failure Of Individual Love.

We Used To Play Music For Fun. Much More Than Now. Now Nobody Picks Up A Guitar Unless They're Paid For It.

Everybody Knows The Dice Are Loaded.

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.

It's Four In The Morning, The End Of December I'm Writing You Now Just To See If You're Better.

I Noticed That When I Was On Prozac My Relationship With The Landscape Improved. I Actually Stopped Thinking About Myself For A Minute Or Two, Because Most Of The Thoughts One Has About Oneself Are Involved With Desire Or Loneliness Or Isolation Or Strategies To Overcome Them.

Hallelujah" "your Faith Was Strong But You Needed Proof. You Saw Her Bathing On The Roof. Her Beauty And The Moonlight Overthrew You. She Tied You To A Kitchen Chair, She Broke Your Throne, And She Cut Your Hair. And From Your Lips She Drew The Hallelujah.

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.

Rust Rust Rust In The Engines Of Love And Time.

As Our Eyes Grow Accustomed To Sight They Armour Themselves Against Wonder.

I Try To Make Those References. I Try To Make Sure That They're Not Too Obscure. But Outside Of That, I Dare Not Claim Anything In The Spiritual Realm For My Own.

I Loved You For A Long, Long Time I Know This Love Is Real It Don't Matter How It All Went Wrong That Don't Change The Way I Feel And I Can't Believe That Time's Gonna Heal This Wound I'm Speaking Of There Ain't No Cure For Love

The Less I Was Of Who I Was, The Better I Felt.

But I'm Stubborn As Those Garbage Bags That Time Cannot Decay, I'm Junk But I'm Still Holding Up This Little Wild Bouquet: Democracy Is Coming To The U.s.a.

If You Want A Lover I'll Do Anything You Ask Me To. And If You Want Another Kind Of Love I'll Wear A Mask For You.

Some Say That No One Ever Leaves Montreal, For That City, Like Canada Itself, Is Designed To Preserve The Past, A Past That Happened Somewhere Else.

I Swear By This Song And By All That I Have Done Wrong, I Will Make It All Up To Thee.

Someone Gave Me Wishes And I Wished For An Embrace.

I'm Planning A Catastrophe.

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?

Gift You Tell Me That Silence Is Nearer To Peace Than Poems But If For My Gift I Brought You Silence (for I Know Silence) You Would Say This Is Not Silence This Is Another Poem And You Would Hand It Back To Me

When It All Comes Down To Dust I Will Kill You If I Must , I Will Help You If I Can. When It All Comes Down To Dust I Will Help You If I Must, I Will Kill You If I Can.

Coroner's Inquest: Death By Drowning. And He Hasn't Been To The Sea-shore In Ten Years.

A Scar Is What Happens When The Word Is Made Flesh.

Wounds And Scars

If You Don't Become The Ocean, You'll Be Seasick Every Day.

I Am An Old Scholar, Better-looking Now Than When I Was Young. That's What Sitting On Your Ass Does To Your Face.

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.

Garages, Barns And Attics Are Always Older Than The Buildings To Which They Are Attached.

Comic Books, Movies, Radio Programmes Centered Their Entertainment Around The Fact Of Torture. With The Clearest Of Consciences, With A Patriotic Intensity, Children Dreamed, Talked, Acted Orgies Of Physical Abuse. Imaginations Were Released To Wander On A Reconnaissance Mission From Cavalry To Dachau. European Children Starved And Watched Their Parents Scheme And Die. Here We Grew Up With Toy Whips. Early Warning Against Our Future Leaders, The War Babies.

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.

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.

No Penance Serves To Renew Them, No Massive Transfusions Of Trust. Why Not Even Revenge Can Undo Them, So Twisted These Vows And So Crushed.

You Should Go From Place To Place Recovering The Poems That Have Been Written For You To Which You Can Affix Your Signature. Don't Discuss These Matters With Anyone. Retrieve. Retrieve. When The Basket Is Full Someone Will Appear To Whom You Can Present It.

Children Show Scars Like Medals. Lovers Use Them As Secrets To Reveal. A Scar Is What Happens When The Word Is Made Flesh.

Undertow" "i Set Out One Night When The Tide Was Low There Were Signs In The Sky But I Did Not Know I'd Be Caught In The Grip Of The Undertow Ditched On A Beach Where The Sea Hates To Go With A Child In My Arms And A Chill In My Soul And My Heart The Shape Of A Begging Bowl

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.

Like A Bird On A Wire, Like A Drunk In A Midnight Choir, I Have Tried In My Way To Be Free!!

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

I Want To Be Paid For My Work, Not Work For My Pay.

Does Anybody Have A Cigarette? I'm Looking Forward To That First Smoke. I've Been Looking Forward To [it] For About 30 Years.

Everytime You Grab At Love You Will Lose A Snowflake Of Your Memory

What [prozac] Does Is Completely Annihilate The Sexual Drive, So The Question Of Passion Hardly Arises.

The Last Refuge Of The Insomniac Is A Sense Of Superiority To The Sleeping World.

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.

I Turned My Back On The Devil, Turned My Back On The Angel Too.

Maybe We, The Cultural Workers , Could Apply Ourselves. We're Not Going To Resolve It In This Moment Or Even In This Generation, But Perhaps As Some Kind Of Agenda We Could Invite Our Writers And Cultural Workers To Address The Problem A Little More Responsibly, Because People Are Suffering Tremendously From A Want Of Data.

Now I've Heard There Was A Secret Chord That David Played, And It Pleased The Lord But You Don't Really Care For Music, Do You? It Goes Like This The Fourth, The Fifth The Minor Fall, The Major Lift The Baffled King Composing Hallelujah

They Ended Every Speech With The Word Hiro, Which Means: Like I Said. Thus Each Man Took Responsibility For Intruding Into The Inarticulate Murmur Of The Spheres. To Hiro They Added The Word Koue, A Cry Of Joy Or Distress, According To Whether It Was Sung Or Howled. Thus They Essayed To Piece The Mysterious Curtain Which Hangs Between All Talking Men: At The End Of Every Utterance A Man Stepped Back, So To Speak, And Attempted To Interpret His Words To The Listener, Attempted To Subvert The Beguiling Intellect With The Noise Of True Emotion.

You Have To Keep Cracking Yourself Open Or You Become A Parody Of Yourself.

And Sometimes When The Night Is Slow The Wretched And The Meek We Gather Up Our Hearts And Go A Thousand Kisses Deep.

Suffering, Violent Suffering, Seems To Be Something That Corresponds With Something That We Experience.

So The Great Affair Is Over But Whoever Would Have Guessed, It Would Leave Us All So Vacant And So Deeply Unimpressed, It's Like Our Visit To The Moon Or To That Other Star, I Guess You Go For Nothing If You Really Want To Go That Far.

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.

You Live Your Life As If It's Real.......a Thousand Kisses Deep

Your Hair Upon The Pillow Like A Sleepy Golden Storm

My Two Great Heroes Are W. B. Yeats And Federico Garcia Lorca.

What Were The Bodies Like On The Beach? Ugly And White And Ruined By Offices.

My Interest In This Pack Of Failures Betrays My Character.

Journalists, Especially English Journalists, Were Very Cruel To Me. They Said I Only Knew Three Chords When I Knew Five!

I Feel That This Is A Vocabulary That I Grew Up With. This Biblical Landscape Is Very Familiar To Me, And It's Natural That I Use Those Landmarks As References. Once They Were Universal References And Everybody Understood And Knew Them And Located Them. That's No Longer The Case Today, But It Is Still My Landscape.

Your Body Will Never Be Familiar.

There Is A Crack In Everything, That's How The Light Gets In.

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.

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.

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.

I Said I Was Ready To Die Recently, And I Think I Was Exaggerating.that Declaration Of Readiness, No Matter What The Outcome, That's A Part Of Everyone's Soul.

But Remember When I Moved In You And The Holy Dove Was Moving Too And Every Breath We Drew Was Hallelujah.

Poetry Is Just The Evidence Of Life. If Your Life Is Burning Well, Poetry Is Just The Ash.

Israel, And You Who Call Yourself Israel, The Church That Calls Itself Israel, And The Revolt That Calls Itself Israel, And Every Nation Chosen To Be A Nation - None Of These Lands Is Yours, All Of You Are Thieves Of Holiness, All Of You At War With Mercy.

This Particular School Of Zen Has Always Considered Itself The Marines Of The Spiritual World, So It Has A Kind Of Bias Against Conceptual Thinking In Favor Of A Very Rigorous Physical Life.

The Birds They Sangat The Break Of Day.start Again!!i Heard Them Say

Never Make A Decision When You Need To Pee.

The Candles Burned The Moon Went Down The Polished Hill The Milky Town Transparent, Weightless, Luminous Uncovering The Two Of Us On That Fundamental Ground Where Love's Unwilled, Unleashed, Unbound And Half The Perfect World Is Found.

My Son And My Daughter Have Both Been An Incredibly Sustaining Force, Especially Through This Recent Bad Patch [of Health]. So, I've Been Blessed And Grateful For Their Company And For Their Assistance.

I Have Tried In My Way To Be Free.

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.

May Everyone Live, And May Everyone Die. Hello, My Love, And My Love, Goodbye.

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.

I Couldn't Feel So I Learned To Touch.

It's The Notion That There Is No Perfection - That There Is A Broken World And We Live With Broken Hearts And Broken Lives But Still There Is No Alibi For Anything. On The Contrary, You Have To Stand Up And Say Hallelujah Under Those Circumstances.

Who Could Have Foretold The Heart Grows Old From Touching Others

Show Me Slowly What I Only Know The Limits Of Dance Me To The End Of Love

We Are Not Mad. We Are Human.we Want To Love, And Someone Must Forgive Us For The Paths We Take To Love, For The Paths Are Many And Dark, And We Are Ardent And Cruel In Our Journey.

It's You My Love, You Who Are The Stranger.

I Won't Comment On What Bob Dylan Said, But I Will Comment On His Receiving The Nobel Prize, Which To Me Is Like Pinning A Medal On Mount Everest For Being The Highest Mountain.

I Alwaysthought Of Myself As A Competent, Minor Poet. I Know Who I'm Up Against.

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.

I Always Considered Myself A Minor Writer. My Province Is Small, And I Try To Explore It Very, Very Thoroughly.

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.

The Fact That My Songs Take A Long Time To Write Is No Guarantee Of Their Excellence.

If You're Squeezed For Information, / That's When You've Got To Play It Dumb: / You Just Say You're Out There Waiting / For The Miracle, For The Miracle To Come.

You Who Build These Altars Now To Sacrifice These Children , You Must Not Do It Anymore. A Scheme Is Not A Vision And You Never Have Been Tempted By A Demon Or A God .

You Have Money, Fame, Youth, Beauty, Talent. That's A Good Start... For Feeling Good.

Other People Singing My Songs Is Something That I've Never Been Casual About. I've Always Been Very Touched By It And I Always Go Into Immediate Critical Suspension.

I Don't Have A Television Set Up [in The Mountains], Of Course, But I Find I Don't Miss It At All, Or The Newspaper. I've Sneaked A Radio Into By Cabin, But I Find I Turn It On Very Rarely.

It's Hard To Hold The Hand Of Anyone Who Is Reaching For The Sky Just To Surrender

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.

It Doesn't Matter How Anything Happens.

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.

Ordinary Eternal Machinery, Like The Grinding Of The Stars

No One Masters The Heart.

I Would Say The Hummingbird Really Deserves The Royalties On [some Of My Songs].

I Loved You In The Morning, Our Kisses Deep And Warm, Your Hair Upon The Pillow Like A Sleepy, Golden Storm, Yes Many Loved Before Us, I Know We Are Not New, In City And In Forest They Smiled Like Me And You, But Now It's Come To Distances And Both Of Us Must Try, Your Eyes Are Soft With Sorrow, Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye.

There's No Forsaking What You Love No Existential Leap As Witnessed Here In Time And Blood A Thousand Kisses Deep

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.

I Guess You Go For Nothing, If You Really Want To Go That Far.

Even Without The Mushroom Cloud Still I Would Have Hated Listen I Would Have Done The Same Things Even If There Were No Death I Will Not Be Held Like A Drunkard Under The Cold Tap Of Facts I Refuse The Universal Alibi

There Is A War Between The Ones Who Say There Is A War And The Ones Who Say There Isn't.

It's Like A Bear Stumbling Into A Beehive Or A Honey Cache: I'm Stumbling Right Into It And Getting Stuck, And It's Delicious And It's Horrible And I'm In It And It's Not Very Graceful And It's Very Awkward And It's Very Painful And Yet There's Something Inevitable About It.

I Cannot Understand Why My Arm Is Not A Lilac Tree.

Do Not Be A Magician - Be Magic!

When You Call Me Close To Tell Me Your Body Is Not Beautiful I Want To Summon The Eyes And Hidden Mouths Of Stone And Light And Water To Testify Against You.

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.

I’ll Be Marching Through The Morning, Marching Through The Night, Moving 'cross The Borders Of My Secret Life.

Seriousness Is Not Calvinistic, It's Not A Renunciation, It's The Very Opposite Of That.

Yes, You Who Must Leave Everything That You Cannot Control, It Begins With Your Family, And Soon It Comes Round To Your Soul. Well I've Been Where You're Hanging, I Think I Can See How You're Pinned: When You're Not Feeling Holy Your Loneliness Says That You've Sinned.

Like Any Dealer He Was Watching For The Card That Is So High And Wild He'll Never Need To Deal Another. He Was Just Some Joseph Looking For A Manger.

I Have Nothing Against The Queen Of England. Even In My Heart I Never Resented Her For Not Being Jackie Kennedy. She Is, To My Mind, A Very Gallant Lady, Victimized By Whoever It Is Who Designs The Tops Of Her Uniforms.

The Winter Has Not Killed Usagain!

You Were Marlon Brando, I Was Steve Mcqueen, You Were K.y. Jelly, I Was Vaseline.

Certainly Within Any Decadent Period, You Would Probably Find The Purest Expressions Of Conviction, And I Do Not See That In Many Of The People I Know.

Get Ready For The Future: It Is Murder.

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.

Any Of The Decisions That I Made, If One Could Actually Locate A Shape Or Form, Were All Within A Wall, The Landscape Of Music.

There Are A Few Things That Deal With Passion. There's Prozac.

I Think Culture's Always Been Violent, And It Is Something We Find Very Entertaining. Not Only Does It Reflect Our Social Reality, But It Also Reflects Our Psychic Reality.

The Older I Get, The Surer I Am That I'm Not Running The Show.

If You Want A Lover I'll Do Anything You Ask. If You Want A Different Kind Of Love I'll Wear A Mask. If You Want To Strike Me Down In Anger Here I Stand. If You Want A Partner In Life Take My Hand. I'm Your Man.

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.

We Are Ugly But We Have The Music.

He Knew That Hair Couldn't Feel; He Kissed Her Hair.

Take One Step To The Side And It's All Absurd.

You Are Locked Into Your Suffering And Your Pleasures Are The Seal.

After A While, If You Are Sufficiently Bored Or Unemployed, You May Want To Read It From Cover To Cover.

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.

Do Not Believe The Truth. The Truth Is Tiny Compared To What You Have To Do.

... I Didn't Fall In Love Of Course It's Never Up To You But She Was Walking Back And Forth And I Was Passing Through

Falling In Love

Some People, It [songwriting] Comes Faster. Some People, It Comes Slower.

It’s A Depressing Habit You Have Of Loving To Sneeze And Of Eating Apples As If They Were Juicier For You And Being The First One To Exclaim How Good The Movie Is. You Depress People. We Like Apples Too.

I Feel That, You Know, The Enormous Luck I've Had In Being Able To Make A Living, And To Never Have Had To Have Written One Word That I Didn't Want To Write, To Be Able To Have Satisfied That Dictum I Set For Myself, Which Was Not To Work For Pay, But To Be Paid For My Work - Just To Be Able To Satisfy Those Standards That I Set For Myself Has Been An Enormous Privilege.

A Woman Watches Her Body Uneasily, As Though It Were An Unreliable Ally In The Battle For Love.

I Bargain Now. I Offer Buttons For His Love.

The Cutting Of The Gem Has To Be Finished Before You Can See Whether It Shines.

Adam [cohen] Is A Great Singer-songwriter In His Own Right.

Singer-songwriters

Don't Call Yourself A Secret Unless You Mean To Keep It.

You've Got A Deadline. Well, I Do, Too: Death.

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.

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