Leonard Cohen Quotes

I know that I'm very lucky to be alive. For 35 or 40 years I've spilt my blood and broke my bones and spent years in hospitals.

I've been through hell. It's hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden - was it a lie? You're struggling because it wasn't real. But I survived. It was hard, but it didn't kill me.

Every lion has a time in their life when a thorn has got to them at one point.

What must be done must be done, whatever the price, the cost, the pain. One day we all must walk through fire.

My father always used to say, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," - 'til the accident.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

I speak to people who have been through so much more.

The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

When you're scared, when you're hanging on, when life is hurting you, then you're going to see what you're really made of.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

To the stars through thorns.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

I had to fight; I had to fall, and I had to get hurt to be where I am.

I've been through the highs and lows. I know what it's like to taste defeat and it's not nice.

I have lived through very difficult times.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

Taking action is hard, but know what? Enduring a bad situation can be its own hell.

Nietzsche famously said "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune

But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.

I never feel more alive than when I'm in great pain, struggling against insurmountable odds and untold adversity. Hardship? Suffering? Bring it!

When things get bad enough, your only resort is to lie in bed and start praying.