leonardcohenminute:

I never depended too much on inspiration. Everyone I know is inspired in the sense that everybody has flashes of insight and moments of deep feeling and seizures of emotion. I don’t think writers have any corner on that kind of experience. But the thing that comes next, which is the application, or the perspiration not the inspiration, that’s what makes a writer. 

Leonard Cohen in a radio interview broadcast by ABC (Australia), March 1980.