Quotes from Neil Peart

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

Innocence gave me confidence to go up against reality.

Live shows were always religion for us. We never played a show - whether it was in front of 15 people or 15,000 - where it wasn't everything we had that night.

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

You don't get something for nothing You can't have freedom for free You won't get wise With the sleep still in your eyes No matter what your dreams might be

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

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

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

Truth is after all a moving target Hairs to split, And pieces that don't fit How can anybody be enlightened? Truth is after all so poorly lit.

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.

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.

It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later.

Each of us, A CEll Of Awareness... imperfect, and incomplete. Genetic blends, with uncertain ends.

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.

You can twist perception, reality won't budge

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

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.