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
A song, you know, you've got a tempo. You know,you've got something that is moving swiftly. You can't stop it, you know? Andit's designed to move swiftly from, you know, mouth to mouth, heart to heart,where a poem really speaks to something that has no time and that is - it's acompletely different perception.
I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.
I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events.
Suzanne had a room on a waterfront street in the port of Montreal. Everything happened just as it was put down. She was the wife of a man I knew. Her hospitality was immaculate. Some months later I sang it for Judy Collins over the telephone. The publishing rights were lost in New York City, but it is probably appropriate that I don't own this song. Just the other day I heard some people singing it on a ship in the Caspian Sea.
My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs.
Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song.
My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places I used to play. And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on. I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.
I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee.
When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.
Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.
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.
I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.
If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. It’s a mysterious condition. It’s much like the life of a Catholic nun. You’re married to a mystery.
I know that there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do. And before this great force, which is greater than any government, I stand in awe and I kneel in respect. And it is to this great judgment that I dedicate this next song.