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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.

-Leonard Cohen

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They Ended Every Speech

Leonard Cohen

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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.

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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.

Love Is Not A Victory March

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.

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 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.

There's Always A Nice Tune [on Radio] - Helps You Get The Dishes Done . I Like To Get The News From Time To Time - Not Too Often. I Don't Feel Deprived.

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.

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

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.

How Bitter Were The Prozac Pills Of The Last Few Hundred Mornings

We Are So Lightly Here. It Is In Love That We Are Made. In Love We Disappear.

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 Bargain Now. I Offer Buttons For His Love.

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.

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.

History Is A Needle For Putting Men Asleep Anointed With The Poison Of All They Want To Keep.

Even Damnation Is Poisoned With Rainbows.

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

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

Don't Dwell On What Has Passed Away Or What Is Yet To Be.

Probably All Cultures, Certainly Western Culture, Always Have Been Violent.

Western Culture

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

It's Time That We Began To Laugh And Cry And Cry And Laugh About It All Again.

You Win A While, And Then It’s Done - Your Little Winning Streak.

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

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

Today [people] Are Ready To Take Emergency Cures, Whatever They Are, If It's Violence, If It's A Fascination With Serial Killing Or Whatever - The Discomfort Is So Intense. Maybe It's Always Been Like That, Certainly It Is Now.

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

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.

Dream After Dream We All Lie In Each Other's Arms

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.

I Heard Of A Man Who Says Words So Beautifully That If He Only Speaks Their Name Women Give Themselves To Him. If I Am Dumb Beside Your Body While Silence Blossoms Like Tumors On Our Lips It Is Because I Hear A Man Climb Stairs And Clear His Throat Outside Our Door.

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 Am Not The One Who Loves - It's Love That Chooses Me.

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.

Sail On, Sail On, O' Might Ship Of State. To The Shores Of Need, Past The Reefs Of Greed, Through The Squalls Of Hate. Sail On, Sail On, Sail On.

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.

First Of All Nothing Will Happen And A Little Later Nothing Will Happen Again.

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?

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.

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.

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

Your Hair Upon The Pillow Like A Sleepy Golden Storm

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.

She Was Made Of Flesh And Eyelashes.

To Have [adam's Cohen] Microscopic Attention To My Work Was Really A Great Privilege.

A Heavy Burden Lifted From My Soul, I Heard That Love Was Out Of My Control.

Some People Are Graced With A Flow; Some People Are Graced With Something Less Than A Flow. I'm One Of Those.

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

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

My Page Was Too White My Ink Was Too Thin The Day Wouldn't Write What The Night Pencilled In.

What A Beautiful Testament To The Creative Spirit And Its True Motives, To Creative Contribution Coming From A Place Of Purpose Rather Than A Hunger For Profit.

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.

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

I Read With Some Amusement My Reputation As A Ladies' Man. My Friends Are Amused By That, Too, Because They Know My Life.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I've Often Said If I Knew Where The Good Songs Came From, I'd Go There More Often.

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.

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

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 Am Not The One Who Loves - It's Love That Chooses Me. When Hatred With His Package Comes, You Forbid Delivery...

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

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

I Am Running Through A Snowfall Which Is Her Thighs, He Dramatized In Purple. Her Thighs Are Filling Up The Street. Wide As A Snowfall, Heavy As Huge Falling Zeppelins, Her Damp Thighs Are Settling On The Sharp Roofs And Wooden Balconies. Weather-vanes Press The Shape Of Roosters And Sail-boats Into The Skin. The Faces Of Famous Statues Are Preserved Like Intaglios.

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.

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.

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

Fare Thee Well My Nightingale, I Lived But To Be Near You. Thow You Are Singing Somewhere Still I Can No Longer Hear You.

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.

I've Never Thought Of Myself As A Religious Person.

Religious Person

One Is Given To Self-dramatization From Time To Time. I Intend To Live Forever.

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.

My Interest In This Pack Of Failures Betrays My Character.

Raise A Million Filters And The Rain Will Not Be Clean, Until The Longing For It Be Refined In Deep Confession.

We Are Awakening From The Dream Of Isolation, From The Dream Of Loneliness, And It's A Terrible Shock.

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.

Friend, When You Speak This Carefully I Know It Is Because You Don't Know What To Say.

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.

Get Ready For The Future: It Is Murder.

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

... 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

I Always Felt I Was Scraping The Bottom Of The Barrel Trying To Get A Song Together.

Bottom Of The Barrel

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.

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

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.

Someone Gave Me Wishes And I Wished For An Embrace.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Most Of Our Distractions Are Designed To Invite Us Away From This Recognition, Which Is A Good Idea.

Although Only One Man May Be Receiving The Favors Of A Woman, All Men In Her Presence Are Warmed.

A Man Never Got A Woman Back... Not By Begging On His Knees.

Well, You Know, There's Depression And Depression. What I Mean By Depression In My Own Case Is That Depression Isn't Just The Blues. It's Not Just Like I Have A Hangover In The Weekend ... The Girl Didn't Show Up Or Something Like That. It Isn't That. It's Not Really Depression, It's A Kind Of Mental Violence Which Stops You From Functioning Properly From One Moment To The Next. You Lose Something Somewhere And Suddenly You're Gripped By A Kind Of Angst Of The Heart And Of The Spirit.

Songs Don’t Dignify Human Activity. Human Activity Dignifies The Song.

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

And May My Bronze Name / Touch Always Her Thousand Fingers / Grow Brighter With Her Weeping / Until I Am Fixed Like A Galaxy / And Memorized / In Her Secret And Fragile Skies.

I Told The Truth, I Didn't Come To Fool You

In Our Rags Of Light, All Dressed To Kill.

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.

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."

Dear Hitler Take Away The Torches I'm Not Guilty I Had To Have This

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 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.

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.

At First First Nothing Will Happen To Us And Later On It Will Happen To Us Again.

And I'll Bury My Soul In A Scrapbook, With The Photographs There And The Moths.

This Civil Action Is Another Case Of A Tragedy That Has Become All Too Familiar In The Music Industry: A Business Manager And Professional Advisers Exploit An Immensely Talented Artist's Loyalty And Trust Through Greed, Self-dealing, Concealment, Knowing Misrepresentation And Reckless Disregard For Professional Fiduciary Duties.

The Poor Stay Poor, The Rich Get Rich / Thats How It Goes / Everybody Knows.

I Wish I Could Say Everything In One Word. I Hate All The Things That Can Happen Between The Beginning Of A Sentence And The End.

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.

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.

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

I Don't Have Any Spiritual Strategy.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Games Are Nature's Most Beautiful Creation

You Can Keep The Body As Well-oiled And Receptive As Possible, But Whether You're Actually Going To Be Able To Go For The Long Haul Is Really Not Your Own Choice.

Ring The Bells That Still Can Ring.

It Is Painful To Recall A Past Intensity, To Estimate Your Distance From The Belsen Heap, To Make Your Peace With Numbers. Just To Get Up Each Morning Is To Make A Kind Of Peace.

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

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

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

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.

Everybody Knows That You've Been Faithful, Give Or Take A Night Or Two.

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'.

I Finally Broke Into The Prison I Found My Place In The Chain Even Damnation Is Poisoned With Rainbows

And Clenching Your Fist For The Ones Like Us Who Are Oppressed By The Figures Of Beauty.

We Do What Only Lovers Can: Make A Gift Out Of Necessity.

Well It's True, Ever Since I Stopped Eating Meat I Feel A Lot Better Among Animals, I Feel I Can Be Much More Honest When I Pat A Dog.

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.

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 Almost Went To Bed Without Remembering The Four White Violets I Put In The Button-hole Of Your Green Sweater And How I Kissed You Then And You Kissed Me Shy As Though I’d Never Been Your Lover

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

Act The Way You'd Like To Be And Soon You'll Be The Way You Act.

...a Young Nurse Is Standing Close Behind Me Wondering Whether She Is Being Drawn By My Power Or Her Charity.

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.

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

It Was A Dance Of Masks And Every Mask Was Perfect Because Every Mask Was A Real Face And Every Face Was A Real Mask So There Was No Mask And There Was No Face For There Was But One Dance In Which There Was But One Mask But One True Face Which Was The Same And Which Was A Thing Without A Name Which Changed And Changed Into Itself Over And Over.

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.

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 .

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.

Ah, Grief Makes Us Precise!

Everybody Knows The Dice Are Loaded.

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.

To The Men And Women Who Own Men And Women Those Of Us Meant To Be Lovers We Will Not Pardon You For Wasting Our Bodies And Time

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.

Lift Me Like An Olive Branch And Be My Homeward Dove Dance Me To The End Of Love.

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

Nothing Can Stop You From Thinking. The Human Mind Is Designed To Think Continually.

I Think That Any Songwriter - And I Think That Bob Dylan Knows This More Than All Of Us - You Don't Write The Songs Anyhow.

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.

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

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.

Ordinary Eternal Machinery, Like The Grinding Of The Stars

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.

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 .

It's Been A Long Time Since I've Stood On A Stage In London. Was About 14 Or 15 Years Ago, I Was 60 Years Old, Just A Kid With A Crazy Dream. Since Then I've Taken A Lot Of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin. I've Also Studied Deeply In The Philosophies And The Religions, But Cheerfulness Kept Breaking Through.

Creators Care Nothing For Their Systems Except That They Be Unique.

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

G-d Is Alive. Magic Is Afoot. G-d Is Afoot. Magic Is Alive.

As The Mist Leaves No Scar On The Dark Green Hill So My Body Leaves No Scar On You And Never Will

Now, I Don't Want To Give You The Impression That I'm A Great Musicologist, But I'm A Lot Better Than What I Was Described As For A Long, Long Time; You Know, People Said I Only Knew Three Chords When I Knew Five.

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.

As I Grew Older, I Understood That Instructions Came With This Voice. What Were These Instructions? The Instructions Were Never To Lament Casually. And If One Is To Express The Great Inevitable Defeat That Awaits Us All, It Must Be Done Within The Strict Confines Of Dignity And Beauty.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Different [to Perform In Israel] Because It Arises From Very Deep Wells Of Affiliation.

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

I Don't Think You Can Write Novels On The Road. You Need A Certain Stability.

A Kite Is A Victim You Are Sure Of. You Love It Because It Pulls.

I've Seen The Future And It's Murder.

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

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.

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

My Heart Sings Of Your Longing For Me, And My Thoughts Climb Down To Marvel At Your Mercy. I Do Not Fear As You Gather Up My Days. Your Name Is The Sweetness Of Time, And You Carry Me Close Into The Night, Speaking Consolations, Drawing Down Lights From The Sky, Saying, See How The Night Has No Terrors For One Who Remembers The Name.

I Would Like To Work With Pat [ Leonard] In Any Capacity. I Would Love To Hear His Versions.

God Is Alive. Magic Is Afoot. God Is Alive. Magic Is Afoot. God Is Afoot. Magic Is Alive. Alive Is Afoot. Magic Never Died. God Never Sickened. Many Poor Men Lied. Many Sick Men Lied. Magic Never Weakened. Magic Never Hid. Magic Always Ruled. God Is Afoot. God Was Ruler Though His Funeral Lengthened. Though His Mourners Thickened Magic Never Fled.

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.

English, I Know You ... You Are German With A License To Kill.

To Keep Our Hearts Open Is Probably The Most Urgent Responsibility You Have As You Get Older.

Something I Wrote Quite A Few Years Ago Was, "the Voices In My Head, They Don't Care What I Do, They Just Want To Argue The Matter Through And Through." It Is A Common Mistake, To Think You're Going To Go Into Some Kind Of Spiritual Practice And You're Going To Be Relieved Of The Human Burdens, From Human Crosses Like Thought, Jealousy, Despair - In Fact, If Anything, These Feelings Are Amplified.

I Never Really Liked Poetry Readings; I Liked To Read Poetry By Myself, But I Liked Singing, Chanting My Lyrics To This Jazz Group.

This Is Every Musician's Dream, To Stand In Front Of An Audience And Not Have To Prove Your Credentials.

The Dreamers Ride Against The Men Of Action. Oh See The Men Of Action Falling Back.

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

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.

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