Interviewer: How can you write poetry if you’re not bothered by something?
Leonard Cohen: “I’m bothered um …(pause) When I get up in the morning, my real concern is to discover whether or not I am in a state of grace. And if I make that investigation, and if I discover that I am not in a state of grace, I try to go to bed.
Interviewer: What do you mean by a state of grace, it’s a phrase I’ve never understood.
Cohen: A state of grace is that kind of balance with which you ride the chaos that you find around you. It’s not a matter of resolving the chaos because there is something arrogant and warlike about putting the world in order.
Ladies and Gentleman inroducing Leonard Cohen
A short film made by the National Film Board some time before Cohen’s singing career over-shadowed his poetry.
