Bruce Cockburn Quotes

I haven't a clue how my story will end, but that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, that's when you discover the stars.

You begin your journey not knowing where it will take you. You have plans, you have dreams, but every now and again you have to take uncharted roads, face impassable mountains, cross treacherous rivers, be blocked by landslides and earthquakes. That's the way my life has been.

The tunnels may be long, and twisted, and dark; but you are supposed to go through them.

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not. The trade winds blow me, and I do not know where the land is; the waves fold over each other; they are in love with themselves; sleeping in their own skin; and I float over them and I do not know about tomorrow.

The writing process is sort of like when you've got no electricity and you've gotten up in the middle of the night to find the bathroom, feeling your way along in the dark. I can't hardly tell you what I do because I really don't know.

No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.

Uncertainty is the necessary companion of all explorers.

There is little faith involved in setting out on a journey where the destination is certain and every step in between has been mapped in detail. Bravery, trust, is about leaving camp in the dark, when we do not know the route ahead and cannot be certain we will ever return.

If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything.

We are in a position similar to that of a mountaineer who is wandering over uncharted spaces, and never knows whether behind the peak which he sees in front of him and which he tries to scale there may not be another peak still beyond and higher up.

If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.

Discovery requires courage and acceptance that we are not in control, and that the future is uncertain.

All growth is a leap in the dark.

All I know is a door into the dark

The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.

I don't really have a metaphor for how I write, but it kinda feels like chipping away at a big dark object that I can't really see.

From an early age I was very, very fascinated by uncertainty.

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

I love the unknown. I love the discovery of what will be happening and just kind of sitting back and not knowing.

'Gonzo' means taking an unknown thing to an unknown place for a known purpose. But sometimes we're lost in an unknown place for no known purpose.

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

Darkness is full of possibility.

I like the unknown. I like mystery.