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I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

Leonard Cohen

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Leonard Cohen
Age: 82 †
Born: 1934
Born: September 21
Died: 2016
Died: November 7
Film Actor
Lyricist
Musician
Novelist
Pianist
Poet
Record Producer
Screenwriter
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Street Artist
Writer
Leonard Norman Cohen
Jikan
Dylan
Songs
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Write
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Anyhow
Think
Songwriter
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Bob
Songwriters

More quotes by Leonard Cohen

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[Europe has] this tradition of self revelation in popular music. We have it here - it's called Country Western Music... I think that's where the deeper and more complex subjects are treated.
Leonard Cohen
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I loved you for a long, long time I know this love is real It don't matter how it all went wrong That don't change the way I feel And I can't believe that time's Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of There ain't no cure for love
Leonard Cohen
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The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul.
Leonard Cohen
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It's easy to look down from the summit you've reached, or even the summit I've reached, and talk about the responsibilities of the artist, but most people are just trying to get their foot in the door and make a living.
Leonard Cohen
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How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?
Leonard Cohen
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I don't think there's any difference between a crush and profound love. I think the experience is that you dissolve your sentries and your battalions for a moment and you really do see that there is this unfixed free-flowing energy of emotion and thought between people, that it really is there.
Leonard Cohen
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It's you my love, you who are the stranger.
Leonard Cohen
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I want to be paid for my work, not work for my pay.
Leonard Cohen
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It's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.
Leonard Cohen
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The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / Thats how it goes / Everybody knows.
Leonard Cohen
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The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.
Leonard Cohen
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Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique.
Leonard Cohen
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I would like to work with Pat [ Leonard] in any capacity. I would love to hear his versions.
Leonard Cohen
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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.
Leonard Cohen
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Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control, It begins with your family, and soon it comes round to your soul. Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned: When you're not feeling holy your loneliness says that you've sinned.
Leonard Cohen
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You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself.
Leonard Cohen
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The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.
Leonard Cohen
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No one masters the heart.
Leonard Cohen
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Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time.
Leonard Cohen
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My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn't be able to make it from room to room. This system has just worked for me, even though I've had to sweat over every word. It's just my style.
Leonard Cohen