Neil Peart Quotes
-
Wheels can take you around.Wheels can cut you down.We can go from boom to bust.From dreams to a bowl of dust.We can fall from rockets' red glare, down to 'Brother can you spare...'Another war.Another wasteland.And another lost generation - Between The Wheels (1984)
-
Half the world hates What half the world does every day Half the world waits While half gets on with it anyway.
-
How I prayed just to get awayTo carry me anywhereSometimes the angels punish usBy answering our prayers - Carnies (2012)
-
Don't try to change Doofus, let Doofus change you.
-
I love jokes as much as anyone, but I don't want to hear my snail jokes every day. But I might want to hear a good song every day.
-
You can do a lot in a lifetime, if you don't burn out too fast/You can make the most of the distance/First you need endurance/First you've got to last.
-
The tarot card 'The Tower' seemed a chilling reflection of the events of September 11, 2001.
-
To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny, and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.
-
Pure libertarianism believes that people will be generous and help each other. Well, they won't. I wish it were so, and I live that way.
-
I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
-
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!"
-
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
-
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.
-
People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung.
-
Innocence gave me confidence to go up against reality.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Once I had defined myself as a compositional drummer, I thought, "Well, I want to be an improvisational drummer."
-
...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.
-
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.
-
You can't get wise with sleep still in your eyes no matter what your dream might be.