Leonard Cohen Writing Quotations

I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.

It's four in the morning, the end of december I'm writing you now just to see if you're better.

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.

I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability.

I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work — just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege.

My page was too white My ink was too thin The day wouldn't write What the night pencilled in.

I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive.

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

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

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?

People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.