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.
Leonard CohenIt's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.
Leonard CohenToday [people] are ready to take emergency cures, whatever they are, if it's violence, if it's a fascination with serial killing or whatever - the discomfort is so intense. Maybe it's always been like that, certainly it is now.
Leonard CohenI'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.
Leonard Cohen