“There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their pr...” — Leonard Cohen Quote

There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their problems. I guess they feel I'm writing about some of the things they themselves are going through. But I don't usually have much help to give - there isn't much you can say to someone in the midst of their own crises.

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.

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song.

The only big life challenge I think I'm worried about is a mid-life crisis because I've done so little. I think if people who've lived normal lives have mid-life crises and buy motorbikes, what is a man who's done nothing?

Crises are part of life. Everybody has to face them, and it doesn't make any difference what the crisis is.

It was one of those early mid-life crises, really. I started asking myself, 'What is it that I want from my life?' This question kept haunting me: 'Do I want to be a lawyer who always wanted to be a writer, or do I actually want to be a writer?

Liberalism has never done as well as it thinks at resolving its own crises.