Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, CC GOQis a Canadian singer, songwriter, poet and novelist. His work has explored religion, politics, isolation, sexuality, and personal relationships. Cohen has been inducted into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame as well as the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received a Princess of Asturias Awards for literature...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth21 September 1934
CityWestmount, Canada
CountryCanada
Get ready for the future: it is murder.
When you've fallen on the highway / and you're lying in the rain, / and they ask you how you're doing / of course you'll say you can't complain...
If you're squeezed for information, / that's when you've got to play it dumb: / You just say you're out there waiting / for the miracle, for the miracle to come.
It is painful to recall a past intensity, to estimate your distance from the Belsen heap, to make your peace with numbers. Just to get up each morning is to make a kind of peace.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / Thats how it goes / Everybody knows.
I smile when I'm angry , I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right , and I'd die for the truth in my secret life .
As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.
It's been a long time since I've stood on a stage in London. Was about 14 or 15 years ago, I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I've taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin. I've also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.
You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah
You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes one kind.
In Montreal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, “the winter has not killed us again!
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation - none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy.
I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.
Out of the thousands who are known or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts, trying to look like the real thing.