Leonard Cohen Quotes

A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."

I went to UCLA and studied studio art. I thought I was going to be a gallery painter, photographer, or ceramicist. Then, when I graduated, that didn't happen immediately. I didn't suddenly get solo shows in Chelsea, and I realized that is actually kind of difficult to break into.

I was poor. I struggled big time, living hand to mouth so I could be the kind of artist I want to be.

You go to New York or L.A., and every waiter wants to be a writer, director or actor. But there's a common thread: everybody wants to do it because they love it.

I got to New York when I was eighteen. I was knocking around, trying to be an actor, writer, musician, whatever happened.

It's hard to live just by selling paintings.

We have always been dreamers, and we are admittedly overachievers, and coming out of high school, we didn't want to be struggling artists.

It's nearly impossible to make a living in the arts.

My mother was willing to support art as a summer program for me. She never supported it as a career decision until I won the National Gallery Portrait Competition.

I had a million jobs before I managed to make a living out of poetry.

But it's hard to support yourself from music when nobody knows you.

I know how difficult it is to make a career in the arts, but even if you don't make a career of it, don't lose it as a hobby. Artists often end up in jobs that have nothing to do with their art. But that side needs to be fulfilled - don't give it up.

When I was setting out to be an artist, I said: If I can just produce one work that some people think is good, if I can become an obscure cult artist, that's all I want. Well, I attained that. I'm an obscure cult artist, and I think now, Why didn't I say I want to be another Picasso or something? What other options were open to me? But I was convinced I couldn't achieve great things because I don't have a steady-state mind.

When I grow up I would like to be an artist in France.

I've been lucky enough to win an Oscar, write a best-seller - my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre. The only way that's going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentlemen's lavatory.

A lot of my friends do creative things and are doing really well at what they do - some writers, some artists. I'm in a driven circle. I've had a lot of opportunities that other people wouldn't necessarily have and seen some cool places.

I was about 6 or 7, I would have said I wanted to be an actor and an artist. And that just kind of kept honing itself around film and getting closer to film.

He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

Each year, more people want to become artists.

I went to Princeton High School, when I was very serious about being an artist. I was in a theatre family but I didn't want to become an actor.

I have two wonderful, supportive and very practical parents who were like, you're really talented and really creative. You should be a lawyer because there's a safe path there. And I knew that I was never going to be a lawyer. And I knew that I wanted to make movies, and I wanted to write shows.

I can paint until I'm forty. After that I intend to dry up.

Every underground artist has that little chip on his shoulder, like "I'm stuck here, and I'm trying to get out of this little hole that I'm in." You've got this core fan base, but it's limited.

I went out and started on my way up in television. I wrote music, I wrote books, I played an instrument half-ass. I would always have liked to play in a band. I would always have liked to be a substantial writer, to write country music for big singers. I had all sorts of proclivities, but I never had any big success.

I come from a family of lawyers. I was expected to be a professional of some sort, not an artist. I was never uplifted for my art.