A Quote by Kazuo Ishiguro

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Quote Topics

Always Like Seen Songs Songwriter Started Stories Wanted

Quote Author

Kazuo Ishiguro
Japanese - Novelist
Born: November 8, 1954

There are some singer-songwriters who start out as poets. So someone like Leonard Cohen wrote and published poetry in the early 60s, but then started writing songs. Bob Dylan's a poet in the sense of bard, aoidos or vates.

Richard F. Thomas

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They're my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He's just really cool.

Aurora

Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far more comfortable giving a journalist "Tom Waits" the character, whose conversation is really a series of strange tales, learned or ad-libbed.

Sylvie Simmons

I started listening to The-Dream a lot. That's when I really got into writing songs. I like the way he put lyrics and makes his songs. So I was like, 'All right,' and I just started writing. That's when I started wanting to be a songwriter.

Bryson Tiller

Jesse James is like a Leonard Cohen song, I wanted to do something that was like a pop song.

Andrew Dominik

When I was 12 years old and first decided I wanted to be a songwriter, the people that I always looked up to were Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, and people like that.

Eric Carmen

People always talk about the lyrics of Leonard Cohen, but I like his melodies. They are very defined and original.

Ludovico Einaudi

Ever since I can remember, I've always wanted to tell stories, but I never had the patience to sit down at a typewriter and write short stories or anything like that. I started writing songs as a way of communicating ideas the best way I could.

Rob Thomas

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

Emeli Sande

Sometimes I feel like Leonard Cohen when he went off to become a Buddhist.

Leo Sayer

When I started writing again, especially when I listened to French music and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I realized that these lots talked about themselves. The greatest artists, they didn't sing; they only spoke.

Benjamin Clementine

Anyone born in the year 1950 who grew to fancy themselves as a soulful 18-year-old bought 'Songs of Leonard Cohen' upon its original release in 1968. For many of them, it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

David Hepworth

I've always played acoustically - it's how I learned. I grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dylan and what have you.

Lee Ranaldo

I've always been curious. I keep a list of people I'd love to have lunch with, like the Pope or Leonard Cohen. I'll read an article about someone I've never met and think, 'I should ask him to lunch!'