Leonard Cohen

There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their problems. I guess they feel I'm writing about some of the things they themselves are going through. But I don't usually have much help to give - there isn't much you can say to someone in the midst of their own crises.

When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do.

My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico García Lorca.

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you're actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice.

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?

To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself.

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.

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.

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

I can make a couple of good sandwiches: tuna salad and chopped egg salad. And Greek bean soup. I was a cook for my old Zen master for many years. So there were two or three dishes that he liked, you know. Teriyaki salmon, a few things.

And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.

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.

And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.

Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song.

I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog.

I never had the sense that there was an end: that there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot.

I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.

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

My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs.