Leonard Cohen: Seriousness is the deepest pleasure we have.

Adam [Cohen] is a great singer-songwriter in his own right.

Leonard Cohen

singer-songwriters adam singers

Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached.

Leonard Cohen

garage barns building

I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song.

Leonard Cohen

quality blessed song

I won't comment on what Bob Dylan said, but I will comment on his receiving the Nobel Prize, which to me is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.

Leonard Cohen

receiving mountain bob

I looked into [Prozac]. I must say that it is certainly a wonder drug.

Leonard Cohen

prozac drug wonder

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

Leonard Cohen

writing song long

There's a deep tribal aspect to my own nature. So when I'm in contact with those deep resources, of course I feel a very special kind of nourishment.

Leonard Cohen

resources kind special

It is different [to perform in Israel] because it arises from very deep wells of affiliation.

Leonard Cohen

affiliation different israel

I've never thought of myself as a religious person.

Leonard Cohen

religious-person persons religious

Some people, it [songwriting] comes faster. Some people, it comes slower.

Leonard Cohen

songwriting faster people

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. This system has just worked for me, even though I've had to sweat over every word. It's just my style.

Leonard Cohen

sweat style pain

Everyone has a kind of magical system that they employ in the hopes that this will open up the channels.

Leonard Cohen

kind

English, I know you ... you are German with a license to kill.

Leonard Cohen

license knows

I would like to work with Pat [ Leonard] in any capacity. I would love to hear his versions.

Leonard Cohen

versions capacity

No one's ever done one of my songs badly. People say to me, "God, so-and-so wrecked that song." Well, I'm unaware of it. Anybody doing one of my tunes has earned my gratitude, and I don't get that many covers where I have the luxury to choose.

Leonard Cohen

luxury gratitude song

The obstacles are great and the suffering is great and people have got to make a living.

Leonard Cohen

obstacles suffering people

The psychologists are valiantly trying to provide us with answers, the religious people are trying to provide us with answers. I think it properly falls on the cultural workers to investigate this predicament with a little less concern for the marketplace and a little more concern for their higher calling.

Leonard Cohen

religious fall thinking

We all are motivated by deep impulses and deep appetites to serve, even though we may not be able to locate that which we are hoping to serve. So this is just a part of my nature and I think everybody else's nature to offer oneself at the critical moment when the emergency becomes articulate. It's only then that we can locate that willingness to serve.

Leonard Cohen

critical-moments may thinking

One is given to self-dramatization from time to time. I intend to live forever.

Leonard Cohen

given self forever

Today [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 Cohen

fascination today people