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
..you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent
After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.
If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask. If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask. If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand. If you want a partner in life take my hand. I'm your man.
If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to. And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you.
I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work — just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.
History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison Of all they want to keep.
I want to be paid for my work, not work for my pay.
I want history to jump on Canada's spine with sharp skates.
I guess you go for nothing, if you really want to go that far.
I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.
My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.
In the broken places, the light shines through.
It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.
Music is the emotional life of most people.