Neil Peart Quotations

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

To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time.

The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Playing a three-hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations.

People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung.

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.

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.

Stamina is the force that drives the drumming; it's not really a sprint.

Too much attention and hoopla doesn't agree with my temperament.

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

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?'

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.

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.

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 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'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.

You have to know when you're at the top of your particular mountain, I guess. Maybe not the summit, but as high as you can go.

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.

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.

Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Rudimental snare work is something I've always loved.

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

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

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

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.

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 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'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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

When they turn the pages of history,when these days have passed long ago--will they read of us with sadnessfor the seeds that we let grow?

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

What you own is your own kingdomWhat you do is your own gloryWhat you love is your own powerWhat you live is your own story

Live for yourself -- there's no one elseMore worth living forBegging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more

Well, I know they've always told you/Selfishness was wrong/Yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song/

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

And the men who hold high placesmust be the ones who startto mold a new realitycloser to the heart.

You don't get something for nothingYou can't have freedom for freeYou won't get wiseWith the sleep still in your eyesNo matter what your dreams might be

It's a test of ultimate willThe heartbreak climb uphillGot to pick up the paceIf you want to stay in the raceMore than just blind ambitionMore than just simple greedMore than just a finish lineMust feed this burning need

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.

You can surrenderWithout a prayerBut never really prayPray without surrenderYou can fightWithout ever winningBut never ever winWithout a fight

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

Innocence gave me confidence to go up against reality.

Adventures suck when you're having them.

Different hearts beat on different strings

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.

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.

Could hell be a place where there is no self-respect? A place where people have no pride in their own existence or behavior, and thus would have none for anyone or anything else?

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.

No changes are permanent, but change is.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill.

Sometimes you're up against everybody in the whole world - even your friends and family are saying, "You need a single." You feel sometimes incredibly alone.

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.

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."

Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days.

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.

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

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

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