The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.
Interpretation
Acknowledge the limitations of personal control in life as one grows older.
This quote reflects the realization that as we age, we become more aware of the greater forces at play in our lives, suggesting that many aspects are beyond our direct control. Leonard Cohen implies that maturity brings a humbling understanding that life has its own course, and we are often participants rather than directors in our journey.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might include this quote to illustrate the unpredictability of life.
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.
Nothing that comes from the deep, passional soul is bad, or can be bad.
We always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are.
In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American people who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population.
For many of the world's conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement.
The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.
All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.
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