noxe reblogged
I feel that my feelings are like everybody else’s. I don’t think a writer knows his feelings, though. That’s why he writes. I would say that he probably knows them less than anyone else. Generally speaking, a writer is more confused, more bewildered, than other people who aren’t writers. One of the absolute qualifications for a writer is not knowing his arse from his elbow. I think that’s where it starts. With a lack of knowledge. The sense of not knowing what is happening and the need to organise experience on the page or in the song is one of the motivations of a writer.
Leonard Cohen in an interview with John Wilde in “Len,” Blitz, 1988. (via quotablecohen)
