Leonard Cohen: about...

Cohen about aging

I think in the back of my mind, I always cherished some idea of an old man in a suit, smoking a cigarette, and delicately talking about his work to somebody. If you hang in there long enough, you begin to be surrounded by a certain gentleness, and also a certain invisibility. This invisibility is promising, because it will probably become deeper and deeper. And with invisibility – and I am not talking about the opposite of celebrity, I mean something like ‘The Shadow,’ who can move from one room to another unobserved – comes a beautiful calm. (2001)

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. It happened to me by imperceptible degrees and I could not really believe it; I could not really claim it for some time. I thought there must be something wrong. It’s like taking a drink of cold water when you are thirsty. Every taste bud on your tongue, every molecule in your body says thank you. (2001)



The clear sense that you know you’re in the homeward stretch is a very compelling component in writing. A lot of other things fall away that you hoped would satisfy you like human life, and your work becomes a kind of haven, and you want to go there, and you’re grateful when the time opens in such a way that you can actually sit down and work at your own work, because everything else somehow has failed. (2009)



There comes a point, I think, as you get a little older, you feel that nothing represents you. You can see the value of many positions, even positions that are in savage conflict with one another. You can locate components on both sides that resonate within you. (2015)

Cohen about politics

[Political] systems express the kind of feelings we have about our personal relationships. So, there’s not going to be justice in this society, women are not going to get a fair deal if men have certain views about women in their beds, in their living rooms, in their kitchens, and vice-versa, women about men. (1988)

It’s an incredible mess … for some odd reason we still dare to hope … Freedom from hope … a kind of freedom from cynicism. It’s beyond cynicism, it’s beyond hope. It’s just an embrace. … Public utterance is way behind private experience. … You’ll find that people are talking much more realistically than the leaders. When a leader begins a talk realistically, unfortunately they’re generally from the extreme left or the extreme right. But the thing that is appealing about their rhetoric is that it’s real. The rhetoric of the center is chronically and obsessively concerned with a version of reality that nobody buys. That something really great is going on. Well something great isn’t going on. Something quite despairing is going on. (1992)

Via: http://cohencentric.com/

I've been listening to all the dissention.
I've been listening to all the pain.
And I feel that no matter what I do for you, it's going to come back again.
But I think that I can heal it, but I think that I can heal it,
I'm a fool, but I think I can heal it with this song.



LOVER, LOVER, LOVER

I asked my father, 
I said, "Father change my name."
The one I'm using now it's covered up
with fear and filth and cowardice and shame.

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me
Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me 

He said, "I locked you in this body,
I meant it as a kind of trial.
You can use it for a weapon,
or to make some woman smile."

[Refrain]

"Then let me start again," I cried,
"please let me start again,
I want a face that's fair this time,
I want a spirit that is calm."

[Refrain]

"I never never turned aside," he said,
"I never walked away.
It was you who built the temple,
it was you who covered up my face."

[Refrain]

And may the spirit of this song,
may it rise up pure and free.
May it be a shield for you,
a shield against the enemy.

[Refrain]

Note: This video was for years wrongly credited to "French TV, May 1974", but "runandplay" recognised Laura Branigan Leonard's 1976 back-up singer on the right; so this was recorded on European 1976 "Best Of" tour. Cohen and band performed in Paris on June 4, 5, 6 and 7, 1976, and this TV appearance happened in the first week of June 1976.