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. – Leonard Cohen
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. – Leonard Cohen
I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune. – Leonard Cohen
I continually blacken pages and scribble away, so I always have a number of songs that are half-finished. – Leonard Cohen
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. – Leonard Cohen
I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn’t begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like ‘Hey Jude’ that I could appreciate. But they didn’t seem to be essential to the kind of nourishment that I craved. – Leonard Cohen
My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the 10,000 nights I spent alone. – Leonard Cohen
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. – Leonard Cohen
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
Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I’ve practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. – Leonard Cohen
I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly. – Leonard Cohen