Leonard Cohen on depression and art →

“If the level of intensity of anybody’s disorder is sufficiently high, you can’t move. For people who’ve experienced clinical depression the problem is getting to the next moment. The room tilts, you lose your balance, you’re incapable of coherent thought.

It’s a popular notion that it is exclusively suffering that produces good work, or insightful work, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think in a certain sense it’s a trigger or a lever, but I think that good work is produced in spite of suffering. As a victory over suffering.”