Maria Popova marks the songwriter's death with thoughts from Leonard Cohen on melding darkness and light in songs like "Anthem," and the mystery of good writing: "It’s just as hard to write a bad verse as a good verse. I can’t discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines."
November 13, 2016
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