I guess it’s legitimate not to like someone’s work, but somehow those descriptions of my work got into the computer, you know, there was “suicide”, or “bedsit”, or “gloom”, “depressive”, “melancholy”, and every time they’d tap out my name those descriptions would come up. You know, as though seriousness had no place in song. The songs we love best are the sad songs.
BBC Radio 1, 1994

I know something’s gotten into the computer under my name. And every time they press the button out come “gloom”, “despair”, “depression”, “melancholy”. It gets a bit tedious. But I’ve gotten accustomed to this tag. (1988)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 28-29

I sometimes see myself in the Court of Ferdinand, singing my songs to girls over a lute. (1967)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 23

I sometimes in my wilder moments consider myself the leader of a government in exile. (1985)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 28

I don’t go around looking for joy. I don’t go around loking for melancholy either. I don’t have a programme. I’m not on an archeological expedition. (1974)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26

A pessimist is someone who is waiting for it to rain. But I’m already soaked to the skin. (1993)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26

I’ve always been on the outside. My mother used to leave me outside in the snow in the winter in Montreal. She ussed to dress me very warmly and then just leave me outside. I could never get in, and those Montreal winter were bitter. (1985)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26-28

They used to say razor blades should be distributed with my records. (1992)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 31

I’ve been living in an exploded landscape for a long time. I have a place to situate all of this. Because I’ve felt that things were going to blow up – it wasn’t as specific as the twin towers – but I’ve felt for some time there was going to be a shaking of the situation.
MacLean’s, 2001

I do feel anxious a lot of the time. I don’t know whether my anxiety is more intense than anybody else’s. I suspect that it isn’t. But there’s also a confusion between depression and seriousness. I happen to like the mode of seriousness. (1979)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26

There’s a place for my kind of music although it can never be mainstream. It is a sanctuary for me and for the people who can use it that way. That’s what I use it for. A sanctuary. (1972)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 25

Perhaps the songs have a form or a mood that is melancholy but they are not meant to depress. On the contrary, I know that in some cases they can have the opposite effect. (1974)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26

I would say I write my songs for people who find themselves in the kinds of predicaments that I found myself in. I think that’s a wide number of people. You could roughly call these people the broken-hearted. (1988)
Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 53

I have explored the same territory – in many different ways – because I have no answers to the problems and because I keep going to the same sources because they are timeless. And as I get older, I hope I can explore them more deeply, and with more courage and honesty rather than just urgency. Irving Layton, the great Canadian poet, once wrote about me that “Leonard Cohen has been blessed with never having had an original idea,” and I take that as a compliment because these things are what everybody goes through. Everybody lives the life of the heart, and we all know what it’s like to feel and break down, and I think we cherish that in our musicians and singers when they reveal that.
Los Angeles Reader, 1993

My depression, so bleak and anguished, was just crucial, and I couldn’t shake it, it wouldn’t go away. I didn’t know what it was. I was ashamed of it, because it would be there even when things were good, and I would be saying to myself, “Really, what have you got to complain about?” But for people who suffer from acute clinical depression, it is quite irrelevant what the circumstances of your life are.
Saturday Night, 2001

So one day, a few years ago, I was in a car, on my way to the airport. I was really, really low, on many medications, and pulled over, I reached behind to my valise, took out the pills, and threw out all the drugs I had. I said, “These things really don't even begin to confront my predicament.” I figured, If I am going to go down I would rather go down with my eyes wide open.
Saturday Night, 2001

A big part of my life has been about overcoming depression. But as far as I could see, there was nothing to be depressed about (...) I had a deep sense of suffering that influenced most of my life. Most of my activities were about drinking, taking drugs, courting women or flirting with religious studies. With all this I tried to confront this depression that I simply couldn’t penetrate.
The Euroman, 2001

I think people, perhaps legitimately sometimes, feel that anguish or suffering is the engine of creativity. It’s a very popular notion... I think most people live their lives in an emergency, and I’m certainly not unique in this respect. I have certainly battled depression over the years, and my time on Mount Baldy was one of the remedies. And I found that my depression might have been the background of my work, but not the spur, not the trigger. Although, without that background, the work isn’t easier. You know, lifting boulders isn’t easier when you’re in a good mood.
Toronto Globe and Mail, 2001

Most of the songs that we love are sad songs, because we experience profound disappointment in our lives, all of us. And to hear it sung, well, that’s what this whole racket is about, isn’t it?
LA Weekly, 2001

It's too late to be depressed.
France-Inter Radio, 2001

From the letters I receive, I understand that many people who are or have been in the same situation have felt a kind of relief, a healing while listening to my songs. This is something that I have been very thankful for. If somebody has got enough time - or are bored enough - to examine my entire work in books and songs, there will, to a certain extent, be an exact description of the process and a few insights in the matter along the way. But I don't imagine that I am a therapist nor possess wisdom about what it is all about. I have described it as well as I could.
The Euroman, Denmark, September 2001