I don't trust my inner feelings, inner feelings come and go.
Interpretation
Trusting your inner feelings can be unreliable as they are often fleeting and changeable.
This quote suggests that our emotions and feelings are not always reliable indicators of truth or direction. Leonard Cohen emphasizes the importance of questioning our initial emotional responses, as they can shift and might lead us astray from more stable truths and judgments.
In practice
In a discussion on emotional intelligence during a workshop.
What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.
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.
Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.
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 think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.
Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.
Talking isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.
Slow but steady wins the race.
Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water!
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it / immediately.
Suffering is the demand that experience be different from what it is.
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