Singer Songwriters From Canada

"Secrets and sharing soda, That's how our time began. Love is a story told to a friend It's second hand."

"I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along, I wanna belong to the living. Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive, Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive."

"I remember the time you told me, you said "Love is touching souls," Surely you've touched mine, cause Part of you pours out of me In these lines from time to time."

"Hey farmer, farmer, Put away that DDT now Give me spots on my apples But leave me the birds and the bees Please!"

"They took all the trees And put them in a tree museum And they charged all the people A dollar and a half just to see 'em."

"Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone. They paved paradise, And put up a parking lot."

"They paved paradise And put up a parking lot With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot."

"By the time we got to Woodstock We were half a million strong And everywhere there was song and celebration. And I dreamed I saw the bombers Riding shotgun in the sky And they were turning into butterflies Above our nation."

"We are stardust, We are golden, And we’ve got to get ourselves Back to the garden."

"I don't know who I am / but you know, life is for learning."

"I finally broke into the prison I found my place in the chain Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows"

"A nation comes to freedom in thousands of steps — some of them huge leaps, the others little. And the evening with Leonard Cohen more than twenty years ago was an evening of hope. Difficult as much to him as it was to us. Not necessarily political but intimate. And I learned to appreciate the power of intimacy. There are moments when nothing can get between you and the other person. And when this person is Leonard Cohen himself you feel blessed. And you feel free."

"No one ever listens to me. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record."

"I don't want, no I really don't want To be John Lennon or Leonard Cohen I just want to be my Dad."

"It is his singing voice as well as his writing pen that has breathed life into these songs. It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher’s stone. … It is a penitent’s voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toast—spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women—and cataloging their sometimes hazardous charms. Nobody can say the word “naked” as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been."

"It is their desire to honor L. Cohen, songwriter, that has prompted a delegation of our brightest artists to climb, one by one, joss sticks smoldering, the steep and salty staircase in the Tower of Song. There is evidence that the honoree might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you’re wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person’s biochemical sky more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact, the poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic desire, let alone disclosing the hidden mystical essence of the material world. Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the “illogical” line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and the bewildering assaults of culture."

"But I was caught, like a fleeting thought Stuck inside Leonard Cohen's mind"

"Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld So I can sigh eternally"

"I finally broke into the prison I found my place in the chain Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows Leonard Cohen is one of the few songwriters who has words that you can just chew on for months and months and yet there’s still flavor left in there to taste. That third line is such a positive one, even though it sounds bleak at first. He saying that there is still hope even in the darkest situations, even in the terrible situations that have thrown yourself into, the times where you crawl into a hole and wait for suffering to be piled on top of you. Even in those moments, the clouds pull away and beams of light shine through. That’s the kind of music that I hope never stops being played, even after the writers of such songs are very very far away, or resting deep in the ground."

"In the Canadian film Hardcore Logo, a Canadian punk rocker suggests "Faster, Leonard Cohen! Die! Die!" as a possible band name. This also refers to the film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!."

"I tell you who I also think is wonderful is a chap called Leonard Cohen … do you know him? … He's remarkable. I mean, the orchestration is fantastic and the words, the lyrics and everything, he's a remarkable man, and has this incredibly sort of laid back gravelly voice, it's terrific stuff I think."

"You're a Leonard Cohen song"

"He's of almost Biblical importance. I don't think there’s going to be another Leonard Cohen."

"He's got your young idealism, he's got You when You can't face the world. He's got You at all stages"

"This was a man where, within a Pop Song, there were some big ideas"

"What if I had to Live here without you Oh, I don't really want to know Where you goin', Lenny Cohen?"

"And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music.""

"The candles burned The moon went down The polished hill The milky town Transparent, weightless, luminous Uncovering the two of us On that fundamental ground Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound And half the perfect world is found."

"And sometimes when the night is slow The wretched and the meek We gather up our hearts and go A Thousand Kisses Deep."

"So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed. It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far."

"I fought against the bottle but I had to do it drunk"

"Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple."

"They're lining up the prisoners And the guards are taking aim I struggled with some demons They were middle-class and tame I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim."

"If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame You want it darker We kill the flame Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name Vilified, crucified, in the human frame A million candles burning for the help that never came You want it darkerHineni, hineni I'm ready, my Lord"

"I swept the marble chambers, But you sent me down below. You kept me from believing Until you let me know: That I am not the one who loves — It's love that chooses me. When hatred with his package comes, You forbid delivery."

"You whisper, "You have loved enough, Now let me be the Lover.""

"I'll try to say a little more: Love went on and on Until it reached an open door — Then Love Itself Love Itself was gone."

"All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance, And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance."

"The light came through the window, Straight from the sun above, And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of Love.In streams of light I clearly saw The dust you seldom see, Out of which the Nameless makes A Name for one like me."

"May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And my love, Goodbye."

"Here is your cross, Your nails and your hill; And here is your love, That lists where it will"

"And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it's all built upon."

"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."

"I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean I love the country but I can't stand the scene And I'm neither left or right I'm just staying home tonight Getting lost in that hopeless little screen But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay, I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A."

"It's coming to America first The cradle of the best and of the worst It's here they got the range And the machinery for change And it's here they got the spiritual thirst It's here the family's broken And it's here the lonely say That the heart has got to open In a fundamental way Democracy is coming to the U.S.A."

"It's coming through a hole in the air From those nights in Tiananmen Square It's coming from the feel That it ain't exactly real Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there From the war against disorder From the sirens night and day From the fires of the homeless From the ashes of the gay Democracy is coming to the U.S.A."

"Every heart to love will come But like a refugee."

"Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

"We're drinking and we're dancing but there's nothing really happening. The place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night."

"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 to come."