Quotes from Neil Peart

Dedicated to the future, with honor to the past.

Just follow your front wheel.

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.

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

All these wounds that I can't get unwound

Perils of solitude #1: People talk to you. I'd rather listen.

Ignorance and prejudice and fear go hand in hand

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

You can twist perception reality won"t budge you can raise objection I won2t be judge and jury

Only a mediocre man is always at his best

Spiritual yearnings are natural to many people, and may give them solace or hope, but extremists of any stripe are not content with faith as armor; they must forge it into a sword.

I watched a storm pass to the north, trailing veils of dark rain.

Grim faced and forbidding Their faces closed tight An angular mass of New Yorkers Pacing in rhythm Race the oncoming night They chase through the streets of Manhattan Head first humanity Pause at a light Then flow through the streets of the city They seem oblivious To a soft spring rain Like an English rain So light, yet endless From a leaden sky

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.

I saw that it was plain wrong to evaluate people according to race, for it was clear that culture was the real divider among peoples.

What a fool I used to be (The truest words I ever wrote, and they get truer every day. )

Big ring around moon, three or four days from full. Rain coming? Big wave every 10 seconds, sometimes like distant explosion, booming sub-bass.

fell into their open arms.

The only reason I am alive is because I could not die.

Once when Buddy Rich was on the road in Michigan, he suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. As he was wheeled in on the gurney, the nurse ran alongside and asked him if he had any allergies, and Buddy growled, "Yeah — country music.")

setting off," when the world both contracts and expands at the same time.

Man, you have to admit, your future's so bright, we don't have to wear shades. Just rainsuits . . .

While I remained ambitious, punctual, and hedonistic at home, I had learned to better appreciate the timeless beauties and blessings of nature, to value sincerity as a cardinal virtue and reject the Western reverence for affectation and hypocrisy, and to make my frantic life pause for sunrises, sunsets, and full moons.