I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy.
And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around.
I don't consider myself a pessimist at all.
I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain.
And I feel completely soaked to the skin. …
I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate
to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all.
I've always been free from hope.
It's never been one of my great solaces.
I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful. ....
I think that it was Ben Jonson who said,
I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies,
but cheerfulness keeps breaking through.
Leonard Cohen, The Joking Troubadour of Gloom
interview in The Daily Telegraph, 26 April 1993
