Neil Peart quotes - page 3

Danger plus survival equals fun. --From A Work in Progress. (Neil Peart)
Life is just a candle, and a dream must give it flame... -- The Fountain of Lamneth (1975) View quote
Neil Peart
To you, is it movement, or is it action? Is it contact or just reaction? And you, revolution, just resistance? Is it living, or just existence? -- The Enemy Within (Part I of 'Fear') (1984) View quote
Neil Peart
Features distorted in the flickering light Faces are twisted and grotesque Silent and stern in the sweltering night The mob moves like demons possessed Quiet in conscience, calm in their right Confident their ways are best -- Witch Hunt (Part III of 'Fear') (1981) View quote
Neil Peart
I can't play to that! View quote
Neil Peart
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. View quote
Neil Peart
If you've got a problem, take it out on a drum. View quote
Neil Peart
Playing a three-hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations. View quote
Neil Peart
To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung. (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. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand... prejudice, fear and ignorance walk hand-in-hand. View quote
Neil Peart
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. (Neil Peart)
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. View quote
Neil Peart
Too much attention and hoopla doesn't agree with my temperament. View quote
Neil Peart
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. View quote
Neil Peart
Stamina is the force that drives the drumming; it's not really a sprint. View quote
Neil Peart