Leonard Cohen Quotes

The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.

My work has always been about authentic feeling, and I think we live in a time where we need that.

People love telling their stories, even if they're very, very sad ones. People love to communicate and express.

There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.

I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.

Great vision communication usually means heartfelt messages are coming from real human beings.

The words that are coming out of my mouth and how I mean them, it's so much different.

Now that's an Okay that really means Okay, not that Okay that women use that means everything but Okay.

Well, usually when a person shakes their head," said McGonagall coldly, "they mean 'no.' So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans.

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.

With a lot of what we take to be true feelings, especially on pop records, we feel them because they're cleverly crafted. And because the words are written by somebody who knows how to craft words and draw on those things and convey those feelings. That doesn't mean they're dishonest. But it also doesn't mean that it's all just pure primitive emotion spilling out.

There's still a feeling that uncensored emotions make a good song. They don't. Pure emotion is just somebody screaming at you, or crying. It doesn't communicate anything. It has to be mediated with some skill and craft, in order to communicate it to a second, a third, or a fourth person. That doesn't make it any less real. And it doesn't make it any less true. But it does mean that, yeah, it's the combination that makes it work.

When we can't hold back, or set boundaries, on what comes from our lips, our words are in charge-not us. But we are still responsible for those words. Our words do not come from somewhere outside of us, as if we were a ventriloquist's dummy. They are the product of our hearts. Our saying, "I didn't mean that," is probably better translated, "I didn't want you to know I thought that about you." We need to take responsibility for our words. "But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken" (Matt. 12:36).

In order to know somebody through their words, I mean, it has to be an, it has to be a letter, you know? It has to be a long e-mail. It has to be a five-page hand-written letter, you know, it has to be overwhelming and messy and sloppy as humans are.

Liz, I like you very much," he says. "Oh," she says, "I like you very much, too!" Owen is not sure if she means "O" for Owen, or just plan "Oh." He is not sure what difference it would make in either case. He feels the needs to clarify. "When I said 'I like you very much,' I actually meant 'I love you.'" "O," she says, "I actually meant the same thing." She closes the car door behind her. "Well," he says to himself, driving back to his apartment, "isn't that something?

Communication: the thing humans forgot when we invented words.

Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

Sorrow you can hold, however desolating, if nobody speaks to you. If they speak, you break down.

Everyone has to understand what we're saying to one another and there's no point in me thinking the line means this and the person I'm speaking to thinks it means something else. So there's a certain amount of analyzing of text that's of course necessary.

You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different.

I try to be genuine. I try to be real. It's such a subjective thing, but I try to convey an emotion.

For me, language is about the impossibility of communicating what we precisely wish to communicate and this gorgeous attempt that we make to do that anyway. I love that we will never say exactly what we mean, but we will forever keep trying.

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people.