We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity.
Interpretation
Lovers possess the unique ability to transform essential needs into meaningful gifts for each other.
In this quote, Leonard Cohen highlights the profound way in which love can elevate even the most basic necessities into acts of generosity and significance. It suggests that true love involves a deep mutual understanding and the capacity to create beauty and value from the ordinary, enriching the relationship by turning necessity into a selfless gift.
In practice
In a speech at a wedding, one might say, 'As Leonard Cohen reminds us, we do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity.'
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.
I am the Love that dare not speak its name.
It's hard to love yourself when you've been told your whole life that there is something wrong with you - when you are called dirty because of your skin color.
Our opinions are what we'll be known for; our love is what we'll be remembered for
She took kisses like so many coats of paint [β¦] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, βShe is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.
Inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.
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