… in the midst of my own personal troubles, I turned to the thing I knew how to do and I made songs of it, and in the making of those songs, much of the pain was dissolved. That is one of the things that art does, is that it heals. A man who makes those choices in his own life is often more beautiful than his work. Any artist who remains true to himself becomes a work of art himself, because that is one of the most difficult things to do. If someone does have that vocation and diligently applies himself to the exigencies that arise, he will lose a great deal but he will have created his own character.
(In conversation with Leonard Cohen)