Quotes By Neil Peart

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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