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All Quotes by author - Neil Peart

" 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. "

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

" Drumming completely eclipsed my life from age 13, when I started drum lessons. Everything disappeared. I'd done well in school up until that time. I was fairly adjusted socially up until that time. And I became completely monomania, obsessed all through my teens. Nothing else existed anymore. "

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

" Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with. "

" 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. "

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

" For me, drum elements are like hieroglyphics - I think of a certain physical figure, and a little three-dimensional glyph will appear in my mind as I'm playing. "

" For me to call myself a musician, it's necessary to play live, and it rewards so much - not just in the pay cheque sense but what it does for my playing. I feel it through a tour - I feel it at the end of a tour - all that I've gathered, and especially now that I am improvising so much. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I believe in taxation and health care that is outside the usual libertarian mandate, because I don't want people to have to suffer. It's as simple as that. "

" I'd be very honored to be the ambassador to drum solos. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke. "

" If I have to travel, I'm going to travel my way and travel in the real world. And I'm going to have conversations every day with people in rest stops and people in gas stations and people in hotels and diners. That nourishes me. "

" 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. "

" If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. "

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

" 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 learning all the time. I'm evolving all the time as a human being. I'm getting better, I hope, in all of the important ways. "

" I'm still no good at ball-and-stick games. If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke. "

" 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. "

" 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?' "

" 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. "

" I think, in music, you're always hoping that you'll have a like-minded audience and that the music you like making will appeal to them, too. "

" I try not to repeat myself in fills in all the Rush songs unless it is something simple or something I feel is my own characteristic thing. "

" It seems to me that's the only way you can have a truly creative aggregate of people is if they're all contributing in different ways. "

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