Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
Interpretation
Scars represent both the pain we've endured and the strength we've gained, serving as a testament to our experiences.
In this quote, Leonard Cohen reflects on the significance of scars in human relationships, suggesting that scars symbolize both vulnerability and resilience. Children display their scars proudly, indicating a certain innocence and acceptance of their past pains, while lovers may hide their scars as secrets, suggesting a more complex interplay of intimacy and vulnerability. Ultimately, Cohen suggests that scars are indicators of the experiences that shape us, transforming pain into something tangible and profound.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might quote this to highlight how experiences shape our character.
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.
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.
Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.
I heard of a man who says words so beautifully that if he only speaks their name women give themselves to him. If I am dumb beside your body while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside our door.
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.
Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.
It took me as long as I had known him to get rid of all of his words. Like turning an hourglass over.
We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce,mind you. And we invented infidelity,too, as well as romantic misery. In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.
Forgiveness - this needs to be our greatest skill. The way to get good at forgiveness is: to be thankful for all the little things you see in the other person.
I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.
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