So Long, Leonard

Cohen never talked up his own importance. He often said he was just making the most of the limited talents he had been given and hoping that whatever insights he had gleaned could be useful to the listener. Songwriting was his way of making sense of a bewildering world and dissolving the loneliness.
 In 1987, the writer Jon Wilde asked Cohen what he had set out to achieve. “How did I ever get into this racket?” Cohen laughed. “I don’t know! What am I exactly doing in it? I don’t know. I haven’t got a clue. I think it just comes down to nudging the guy next to you and saying, ‘That’s the way, isn’t it?’ They can either agree or not agree. One is continually trying to affirm something with the man in the next seat.”

Songwriter whose work inspired generations dies at 82.