Leonard Cohen Ten Years on: Ten quotations from The Man who Saw the Angels Fall

Posted on Nov 09, 2026

Ten years after his death, we commemorate and reflect on the life of visionary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen with ten quotations drawn from National Jewish Book Award-winning author Christophe Lebold’s Leonard Cohen: The Man who Saw the Angels Fall.

In his prologue to the biography, Lebold introduces three portraits of Leonard Cohen: 'metaphysician of the broken heart'; 'eternal pilgrim, perfect Jew', and at length 'the man who saw the angels fall.' The following quotations seek to bring these three Leonard Cohens into conversation.

1. Leonard Cohen, the permanent traveller

... what ultimately matters is what those places had taught Leonard: that we are but hosts in this life. That’s the humble wisdom of travellers: to know that the task of making the world hospitable must be started afresh every day with every new room. Being at home is every man’s responsibility. (p XXIII)

Much of Leonard Cohen's life was spent travelling. In adulthood, apart from his six years in a monk's cabin in the 90s, he did not spend more than six months in the same place. One interpretation is that travelling taught him the fleetingness of life.

2. Following 'lines of flight'

He kept moving and offset the vertical axis of the Fall with the horizontal lines that French philosopher Gilles Deleuze called “lines of flight.” (p XX)

Lebold frames Cohen's constant state of travel as an attempt to counterbalance a simultaneous poetic 'fall'. This philosophical interpretation befits the spiritual nature of Cohen’s own work.

3. Leonard Cohen's artistic aim: to teach us the lightness of life

to teach us how to dance with what’s missing in our lives. To teach us to open our hands, let go of our grip, and notice that, in the letting go, the hungry spirit in us evaporates and everything becomes lighter... (p250)

This sentiment is manifest, as Lebold points out, in the refrain of The Smokey Life: 'Light, light enough to let it go.'

'Enlightened, Moi?' Leonard Cohen touching a lightbulb at home in Montreal (Charla Jones, 2006)

'Enlightened, Moi?' Leonard Cohen at home in Montreal (Charla Jones, 2006)

4. Poet of the 'Secret Life'

Beneath the social and psychological surface of our lives, interior dramas are silently played out, weaving the thread of a second, "secret" life that no one can escape: the life of the heart. (p XXVIII)

For Lebold, Cohen's work is an exploration of that life. Something not everyone knows is that Leonard Cohen did not just write songs but two novels and many poems, including a diary of amorous teachings and texts in the style of Kamasutra.

5. A glimpse into Cohen's relationship with elusive German singer-songwriter Nico.

Lebold shares an unpublished diary entry for March 15, 1967:

Terrible day. Endless thoughts for Nico. Guitar dead, voice dead, melodies old and lying [...]. Nico in a terrible mood. Tried to keep her by my side for a few moments. Impossible. (p118)

An apt presentation of Nico and Cohen's relationship: She is one of the few women who resisted the allure of the notorious lover. They remained friends and Cohen wrote many songs inspired by Nico, including 'Take this Longing'.

6. Leonard Cohen and the duality of man

He had always seen himself as a double agent – a poet infiltrated in rock music and a warrior disguised as a poet. (p291)

7. Crooner, rockstar, Jewish prophet

‘Leonard Cohen […] reconfigures the Jewish prophet as rock and roll desperado.’ (p326)

Having grown up in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, Cohen’s heritage shaped his life, poetry and music. In his 1992 track ‘The Future’, Cohen takes on the role of divine seer, warning his audience about the day of doom for a world entrenched in social and political strife and violence.

'Too Tough for Us', self-portrait, 2003

8. Leonard Cohen the Buddhist monk

At the end of Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat', the speaker asks, 'Did you ever go clear?' Lebold responds:

Zen also makes all things clear: the seasons become clear, as do the contours of each day [...] And as you sit in silence for hours on end, what structures your inner life becomes very clear, indeed.' (p342)

For about five years from 1994, Cohen lived as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk, living in a remote Buddhist centre in the mountains around LA. He took the name 'Jikan', meaning 'The Silent One'. He returned in 2001 with the mystical album Ten New Songs.

9. Leonard's successful return from a 15-year tour hiatus in 2008

On 11 May 2008, Cohen made a surprise appearance at The Fredericton Playhouse in New Brunswick, Canada. Cohen's return to the stage after his seclusion as a Buddhist monk was a huge success. What made these performances so distinctive, as Lebold points out, was Cohen's ability to bring each of his poetic characters together as one - through the power of his music.

the poet [...] brought onto the stage every Leonard we have come to love. The unrepentant sinner. The prophet of doom. The inept monk. The wandering Jew. The Zen master. The high priest of the heart. The compulsive seducer. And all of them gathered in that one figure: “Leonard Cohen.” (p380)

Famous Blue What? Cohen by Ron Watts, 1983

10. Lebold’s response to the question, ‘What was Leonard Cohen?’

We might perhaps suggest that “Leonard Cohen” was first the name of a skill — the ability to see men and angels fall — and the name of that literary alchemy which turns what is darkest in out lives into light. (p427)

How would you respond to the question? How should we remember Leonard Cohen a decade after his passing?