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" I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse. "

Leonard Cohen

Anxiety

Sense

Speak

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" There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. "

" I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet. "

" I continually blacken pages and scribble away, so I always have a number of songs that are half-finished. "

" Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered. "

Leonard Cohen

Prayer

Language

" I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life. "

" I have a deep tribal sense. I grew up in a synagogue that my ancestors built. I sat in the third row. My family was decent. They were good people; they were handshake people. So I never had a sense of rebellion. "

" 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. "

" My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn't be able to make it from room to room. "

" As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one's life or one's work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now. "

" The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show. "

Leonard Cohen

Running

Get

" At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It's a cliche, but it's underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable. "

" I was born in a suit. "

" There are writers who are great visionaries, who can depict huge movements - things like that. They're the great writers. I'm just the other kind. "

Leonard Cohen

Things

Other

" We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what? "

" I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. "

" Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five! "

Leonard Cohen

Three

Said

" In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress. "

" Songs seem to take me a long time. I don't know why; they're not especially excellent for taking so long. "

Leonard Cohen

Time

Why

" I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don't write the songs anyhow. So if you're lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you're lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this. "

" If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often. "

Leonard Cohen

Knew

Songs

" When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. "

" I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it. "

" Some people care about their work lasting forever - I have little interest in it. "

" We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it. "

" I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin. "

" I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write. "

" As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line. "

" 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. "

" We're always experiencing joy or sadness. But there are lots of people who've closed down. And there are times in one's life when one has to close down just to regroup. "

" Music is the emotional life of most people. "