Neil Peart Quotes

You just become adaptable and try to lead a good life in ways that make sense, regardless. Because I know at the end of it, if I'm going to meet Jesus or Allah or Buddha, I'm going to be all right.

I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea, and it would change things. That's a harmless conceit. With people, too, you constantly think, 'If I'm nice to people and treat them well, they'll appreciate it and behave better.' They won't, but it's still not a bad way to live.

You can twist perception
reality wont budge
you can raise objection
I won2t be judge and jury

Adventures suck when you're having them.

Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves.

Anytime I have an idea, I'll make sure that I put it down so that when we do sit down to write an album, I don't have to dream it all out of thin air. I don't have to be creative on the spur of the moment, or spontaneously artistic. I just take advantage of whenever creativity strikes.

I don't like lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy made up the lyrics in five minutes.

All preordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face
You can't pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate

Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet

I even felt a vicarious guilt, like a German meeting Jewish people in Poland who had never heard of the Holocaust, or that there were Jews in America, and trying to explain it to them. Ashea, I wished I could say. Ashea.

I am a big fan of Dos Passos' stylistic ability, his poetic approach to prose, but the ideas presented in the songs are quite different from those which he exemplified.

Though his mind is not for rent
Don't put him down as arrogant
His reserve, a quiet defense
Riding out the day's events

What you say about his company
Is what you say about society
Catch the mist, catch the myth
Catch the mystery, catch the drift

The world is, the world is
Love and life are deep
Maybe as his skies are wide

Today's Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you
And the space he invades
He gets by on you

No his mind is not for rent
To any god or government
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren't permanent
But change is

What you say about his company
Is what you say about society

The world is, the world is
Love and life are deep
Maybe as his eyes are wide

Exit the warrior
Today's Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you
And the energy you trade
He gets right on to the friction of the day

Even as a kid, I never wanted to be famous; I wanted to be good.

Courageous convictions will drag the dream into existence.

What a young musician's dream, to say, "Look at those chrome drums. Look at that 22-inch ride cymbal. I'll have those." It was one of those unparalleled exciting days of your life.

Racetracks are designed to make it as difficult as possible to get around that corner fast. And some ramps, by necessity, are that way, too.

Once I had defined myself as a compositional drummer, I thought, "Well, I want to be an improvisational drummer."

I think everything I do has Howard Roark [hero of The Fountainhead] in it, you know, as much as anything. The person I write for is Howard Roark.

I want to be an improviser, and I've worked very hard at that. It's an art. You don't just play whatever comes into your head; you have to be very deliberate about what you do.

And me, I've got to start all over. Not only build a new life, but construct a new person. I call my old self "that other guy," for I share nothing but his memories, and everything he ever liked I've had to discover all over again, one by one, so that I've held on to, for example, reading, motorcycling, and birdwatching, but I'm not yet sure about art or music (I can look at it or listen to it, but not with the same "engagement" I used to), and I have no interest in work, charity, world events, or anybody I don't know. In my present gypsy life, I encounter a lot of people every day, and some of them I instinctively like and respond to in a brief encounter at a gas station or small-town diner, but for the most part I look around at ugly and mean-spirited people and think, "Why are you alive?

I had spindly little ankles, and growing up in Canada, I couldn't skate. I was no good at any sports so was very much a pariah through those adolescent years.

I'm less comfortable in a gregarious social situation, and you can be introverted and still share everything. It just means that you're guarded.

It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level ... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling ... things that require stamina, not finesse.

Getting through Lake Tahoe was already like L.A., with construction all over the place,

When I started playing, I played in R&B bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that.

Lessons taught but never learned, all around us anger burns. Guide the future by the past. Long ago the mould was cast.

If the future's looking dark,
We're the ones who have to shine.
If there's no one in control,
We're the ones who draw the line.
Though we live in trying times,
We're the ones who have to try.
And we know that time has wings,
So we're the ones who have to fly.

No one gets to their heaven without a fight.

Do yourself a favor. Don't ever say to me, 'Everything happens for a reason.'

When punk and new wave styles exploded in the late '70s, some established artists were nimble enough to respond to the changes around them. Some grumbled, "What am I supposed to do, forget how to play?", and continued to ride their dinosaurs into extinction, but others willingly adapted to the streamlining and back-to-basics urges of the times, without giving up all they had learned. Former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel, for example, or former Yes keyboardist Trevor Horn, continued to produce vital, influential music through the '80s and '90s. Ian Anderson has continued to lead Jethro Tull out of the '60s and '70s and quietly through the decades, making high quality music and finding a large enough audience to continue recording and touring worldwide.

You can surrender without a prayer, but never really pray without surrender. You can fight without ever winning, but never ever win without a fight.

I have come to believe that anger and grudges are burning embers in the heart ...

I am the audience. I want to observe people. Even when I'm playing drums onstage, I'm watching people. I'm looking at them and their faces and their T-shirts and their signs. And travelling by motorcycle, especially, the world is just coming at me.

Dedicated to the future, with honor to the past.

Ignorance and prejudice and fear go hand in hand

I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school. I know [people] who had the popular, good-looking path in high school; they tend not to do so well. It was a little bit too easy for them, where for those of us who struggled in every sense, perhaps our determination and self-reliance and discipline were reinforced by that.

There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming.

The government's only functions are to protect the rights of the individual; therefore, you need a police force and an army.

No changes are permanent, but change is.

One day I feel I'm on top of the world
And the next it's falling in on me
I can get back on
I can get back on
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel,
And the next it's rolling over me
I can get back on
I can get back on
It's a far cry from the world we thought we'd inherit
It's a far cry from the way we thought we'd share it

Half the world cries Half the world laughs Half the world tries To be the other half

Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days. I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school.

Excitement is found along the road, not at the end, and likewise, peace is not a fixed point-except perhaps in the unwanted "rest in peace" sense. PEACE is the breathing space between destinations, between excitements, an occasional part of the journey, if you're lucky. PEACE is a space you move through very rarely, and very briefly-but your not allowed to stay there.
you have to keep moving, and go do what you do.
because you can ...

I had come to appreciate the long open stretches of two-lane highway across the sagey sea and mountain-studded plateau of the Great Basin, but the towns and cities were another thing. I liked the natural face of Nevada, but was not as impressed by the human face.

People say to me, 'Are you still excited when you go on tour?' Should I be excited about leaving my family? No, and no one should. It's as simple as that. If you put aside the fantasy of it, it is what it is and has to be done. And that's fine, and I pour my entire energy and enthusiasm into it, but of course, I'm of two minds about the whole idea.

Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.

A quality of justice A quantity of light A particle of mercy Makes the color of right

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

As the train rolled through the countryside, so lush and green, and into the sprawling suburbs of south London, I stared around at all the strangeness: the narrow little "terraced" houses all in rows of brick and chimneypots, the tiny back gardens with clotheslines and garden sheds, the little cars all on the wrong side of the road - it was all so delightfully foreign, and exotic. My first lesson that the rest of the world really was more different than I knew or imagined.

And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start to mold a new reality closer to the heart.

For a person of my sensibility, you're only left with the Democratic party.

What is a master but a master student? And if that's true, then there's a responsibility on you to keep getting better and to explore avenues of your profession.

If it's cross-country ski season, I'll be out doing that, or snowshoeing up in Quebec. In my California home, I go to the local Y and I like doing yoga. It's been hugely beneficial to me in injury avoidance.

All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so boldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty.

When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass-drum pedal, that's what made the drum set possible.

I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.

A spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission.

It astonished me in the early Nineties to suddenly have musicians admit that they had been inspired and influenced by us. That meant a lot at that time. But of course, being human, the ... disrespect isn't even strong enough a word, is it? The opprobrium was painful. Being popular and hated is not satisfying.

We can walk our road together if our goals are all the same. We can run alone and free if we pursue a different aim. Let the truth of Love be lighted. Let the love of truth shine clear. Sensibility armed with sense and liberty with the Heart and Mind united in a single perfect sphere.

If drummers are 'anti-solo,' that's up to them. They're musicians, and they can play whatever they want. But my inspirations early on were people like Buddy Rich, seeing him on 'The Tonight Show', or Gene Krupa.

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose a path thats clear. I will choose Freewill.

The reality is that my style of drumming is largely an athletic undertaking, and it does not pain me to realize that, like all athletes, there comes a time to ... take yourself out of the game.

All four winds together can't bring the world to me Shadows cast a play of light, so much I want to see Chase the sun around the world, I want to look at life-In the Available Light. I'll go with the wind, I'll stand in the light.

Once, I went speeding past an old couple and smiled as I imagined their conversation: him grumbling about me and her telling him not to be such an old grouch. Then, suddenly I was in tears, thinking, 'I'll never get to be a grumpy old grandpa!'

It's interesting. I've known quite a few good athletes that can't begin to play a beat on the drum set. Most team sport is about the smooth fluidity of hand-eye coordination and physical grace, where drumming is much more about splitting all those things up.

Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand ... prejudice, fear and ignorance walk hand-in-hand.

Time is a gypsy caravan
Steals away in the night
To leave you stranded in dreamland
Distance is a long-range filter
Memory a flickering light
Left behind in the heartland

Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your song.

The thing for me about Ayn Rand is that her philosophy is the only one applicable to the world today - in every sense. If you take her ideas, then take them farther in your own mind, you can find answers to pretty well everything on an individual basis.

Only a mediocre man is always at his best,

The songs he chose reflected that same withdrawn, private man, but this man had the gift of expressing his inner soulscape through the medium of some of the 20th century's finest songwriters, from Rodgers and Hart to Antonio Carlos Jobim to Jimmy Webb, and as always, making those songs his own.

To get nostalgic about other people's music, or even about your own, makes a terrible statement about the condition of your life and your prospects for the future. I have no patience with that kind of attitude, whether it's on radio or among friends.

Half the world hates
What half the world does every day
Half the world waits
While half gets on with it anyway

Look in, look the storm in the eye. Look out, to the sea and the sky. Look around, at the sight and sound. Look in, look out, look around.

If you've got a problem, take it out on a drum.

It's not the music you hear in your head that other people are going to hear. You have to be able to make it true enough to the image in your head, and that's where technique and technology come in, for sure, and knowledge. It's not true and will never be true that someone who knows nothing can sit in a basement and make great music.

The important thing is: if you fail once, or if your luck is bad this time, the dream is still there. A dream is only over if you give it up-or if it comes true.

The Seven Cities of Gold always fascinated me. Southwestern U.S. history especially fascinates me. The whole spur of the Spanish exploration of the Southwestern U.S. was the search for these mythical Seven Cities of Gold.

In 2007, I studied with Peter Erskine because I was doing a Buddy Rich tribute concert, and I wanted to take my big-band drumming up a level. I went over to Peter's house with my sticks, feeling like a 13-year-old again.

But glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity.

If I do something weird, play it twice and it's a new part.

More a paraphrase than a quote, really, but it comes from a prayer which was stitched into a sampler above my grandmother's bed. It began like this: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep ... '

Without knowing it, I had identified a subtle but important part of the healing process. There would be no peace for me, no life for me, until I learned to forgive life for what it had done to me, forgive others for still being alive, and eventually, forgive myself for being alive.

Thoreau, At death, our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us, and are found out, or depart farther from us, and are forgotten.

When I was young, my ambitions were very modest. I thought, 'If only I could play at the battle of the bands at the Y, that would be the culmination of existence!' And then the roller rink, and you work your way up branch by branch.

I've heard the stories. Like, Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi Hendrix play. I never understood that because, when I went and saw a great drummer or heard one, all I wanted to do was practice.

If you want something done right, just forget it.

Everything that we were, everything we based our lives upon, everything that we believed is gone. In my journal one time, I expressed the feeling of hurt that I carry around, so similar to the feeling of being betrayed, and I concluded that I had been betrayed, by Life itself, and that's pretty deep. So, the betrayed ones, like you and me, have to start all over again, from Absolute Zero, and construct some new version of "Life," one that we can "live with." No way we can hold onto what we used to believe, and no way we can forget what has actually happened in our lives, and in our worlds. We will never trust Life again.

Geddy once joked, 'You're the only guy I know who rehearses to rehearse!

Rudimental snare work is something I've always loved.

We don't want to be Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. That type of thing wasn't what we were after. It was most important for each of us to be equal in input and output - each of us has to pull the same amount, musically, in composition and in every sense of being in the band.

I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.

There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would change things.

Standing in front of a microphone where every word or every slip that you make, especially in these times, is with you forever - you want to say the right thing. I fell into having to extemporize, and it came okay because of tools I've learned. I said [to myself], "Remember [to mention] mom and dad."

I sang the hymns, and I read the Bible stories, but I was always perplexed, like, 'Really? Jesus wants you for a sunbeam? For a what?'

Lotus-land as it appears in 'Free Will' is simply a metaphor for an idealized background, a 'land of milk and honey.' It is sometimes also used as a pejorative name for Los Angeles, though that was not in my mind when I wrote it.

Our songs were not written to be listened to in headphones or on the radio. They were written to be played. All of the little infinite detail that went into the arrangements and giving ourselves lots of breathing room in terms of playing what we wanted to play and using up any ideas that we had - all of those were conceived to be performed.

From first to last, the peak is never passed. Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes.

As crises came up later on - "Oh, we have to compromise, and the record company wants to do this," I'd be like, "No, I don't have to."

I'm a linear thinking agnostic, but not an atheist folks.

It's always a happy day when YYZ appears on our luggage tags.