Top 100 Peart Quotes
#1. I was always impressed by some of the progressive styles of guys like Neil Peart.
Tommy Lee
#2. He often referred to Rush's three members - Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson, and Geddy Lee - as "the Holy Trinity" or "the Gods of the North.
Ernest Cline
#3. The records that I grew up listening to had feel, and the drummers that inspired me - like Stewart Copeland, Neil Peart, Phil Collins and Roger Taylor - all had their own voice and individual style.
Taylor Hawkins
#4. 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.
Neil Peart
#5. More a paraphrase than a quote, really, but it comes from a prayer which was stitched into a sampler above my grandmother's bed. It began like this: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep ... '
Neil Peart
#6. 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.
Neil Peart
#7. 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.
Neil Peart
#8. Too much attention and hoopla doesn't agree with my temperament.
Neil Peart
#9. 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
#10. She opened her hand, and a ball of fire blasted from it toward the cloudless sky of the Realm. It whirled above the Shifters, growing and stretching into a huge flaming disc. It moved down, forming a spinning inferno wall around them.
A.O. Peart
#11. I think everything I do has Howard Roark [hero of The Fountainhead] in it, you know, as much as anything. The person I write for is Howard Roark.
Neil Peart
#12. Dedicated to the future, with honor to the past.
Neil Peart
#13. Innocence gave me confidence to go up against reality.
Neil Peart
#14. 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
#15. From the point of ignition.
To the final drive.
The point of the journey is not to arrive.
Neil Peart
#16. Do yourself a favor. Don't ever say to me, 'Everything happens for a reason.'
Neil Peart
#17. 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.
Neil Peart
#19. But glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity.
Neil Peart
#20. Getting through Lake Tahoe was already like L.A., with construction all over the place,
Neil Peart
#21. Rudimental snare work is something I've always loved.
Neil Peart
#22. 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.
Neil Peart
#23. 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.
Neil Peart
#24. Behind them the solemn-faced warriors stood, engraved into the vast double doors of the mansion. In front of them, the fountain lay broken into three large chunks and a mass of smaller rocks, scattered around.
A.O. Peart
#25. For a person of my sensibility, you're only left with the Democratic party.
Neil Peart
#26. I have come to believe that anger and grudges are burning embers in the heart ...
Neil Peart
#27. 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.
Neil Peart
#28. When I started playing, I played in R&B bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that.
Neil Peart
#29. And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start to mold a new reality closer to the heart.
Neil Peart
#30. Penelope screamed incoherently in Erik's tight embrace. Kaliope sat on her heels, rocking back and forth, silent. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking. She was silent
A.O. Peart
#31. Even as a kid, I never wanted to be famous; I wanted to be good.
Neil Peart
#32. I'm a linear thinking agnostic, but not an atheist folks.
Neil Peart
#33. Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves.
Neil Peart
#34. No one gets to their heaven without a fight.
Neil Peart
#35. She reached back with remarkable speed and, raising the weapons above her head, slid them out to the sides. The swords made a high-pitch metallic screech when their surfaces glided against each other
A.O. Peart
#36. I can't be here. We can't be together now. Too much is at stake.
A.O. Peart
#37. She slammed her right fist into her left palm. A thick blinding ray of light shot out from between her hands. It looked like liquid fire. One end quickly coiled itself around Bastet's palm and wrist. The other end danced in front of her as if mimicking a swaying cobra.
A.O. Peart
#38. Courageous convictions will drag the dream into existence.
Neil Peart
#39. 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.
Neil Peart
#40. 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.
Neil Peart
#41. 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.
Neil Peart
#42. 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.
Neil Peart
#43. Lessons taught but never learned, all around us anger burns. Guide the future by the past. Long ago the mould was cast.
Neil Peart
#44. Come and get it, J," she teased.
"You are an illusion," Jatred answered calmly.
"Am I?"
"You just walked on the water, but your dress is dry," he snorted.
A.O. Peart
#45. Better the pride that resides as a citizen of the world than a pride that divides when a colorful rag is unfurled
Neil Peart
#46. Hello girls! My boobies are curiously sticking their heads up, trying to see what vagina is so breathlessly talking about.
A.O. Peart
#47. 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.
Neil Peart
#48. Two long lines of Shifters stretched over the field, standing unmoved. They expertly held composite bows at ready, various in origin and style.
A.O. Peart
#49. 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.
Neil Peart
#50. The government's only functions are to protect the rights of the individual; therefore, you need a police force and an army.
Neil Peart
#51. Geddy once joked, 'You're the only guy I know who rehearses to rehearse!
Neil Peart
#52. 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.
Neil Peart
#53. Hay farms, scrub forest, and some bald-looking areas of
Neil Peart
#54. Careful, wolf. We don't want the human to realize how much we can eat," she chuckled, talking to him with her mind.
A.O. Peart
#55. 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.
Neil Peart
#56. You can surrender without a prayer, but never really pray without surrender. You can fight without ever winning, but never ever win without a fight.
Neil Peart
#57. 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.
Neil Peart
#58. Thoreau, At death, our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us, and are found out, or depart farther from us, and are forgotten.
Neil Peart
#59. All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so boldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty.
Neil Peart
#60. I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
Neil Peart
#61. A battle? What battle? Jasmira shrieked.
A.O. Peart
#62. Blue fire ran along the blade. With the Goddess's commanding pose and a flaming sword in hand, she resembled angel Uriel.
A.O. Peart
#63. 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.
Neil Peart
#64. 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.
Neil Peart
#65. 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.
Neil Peart
#66. 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.
Neil Peart
#67. The Amulet released a brilliant fan of white rays, right from Jatred's chest and through the fabric of his shirt.
A.O. Peart
#68. I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.
Neil Peart
#69. Kiss him! Kiss him, you foolish girl!" She heard Amber yelling in her mind.
A.O. Peart
#70. The beasts' gruesome growls and roars unmistakably sounded like a dare.
A.O. Peart
#71. You can twist perception
reality wont budge
you can raise objection
I won2t be judge and jury
Neil Peart
#72. The air smelled of blood, sweat, and anger.
A.O. Peart
#73. Jatred's white teeth flashed in an inviting smirk. To irritate the men even more, he motioned to them with his hand, ending the movement with a flip of his middle finger.
"Come and get it, grandpas," he hissed.
A.O. Peart
#74. 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.
Neil Peart
#75. Like a force of nature
Love can fade with the stars at dawn.
Neil Peart
#76. Half the world cries Half the world laughs Half the world tries To be the other half
Neil Peart
#77. Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.
Neil Peart
#78. To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time.
Neil Peart
#79. 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.
Neil Peart
#80. Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away. Waiting for the rainbow's end to cast its gold your way ... You don't get something for nothing. You can't have freedom for free
Neil Peart
#81. All four winds together can't bring the world to me Shadows cast a play of light, so much I want to see Chase the sun around the world, I want to look at life-In the Available Light. I'll go with the wind, I'll stand in the light.
Neil Peart
#82. Adventures suck when you're having them.
Neil Peart
#83. One likes to believe in the freedom of music.
Neil Peart
#84. It is impossible to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and be a Republican. It's philosophically absolutely opposed - if they could only think about what they were saying for a minute. That's when you get caught up in the webs of what people call themselves and how they behave.
Neil Peart
#85. He swore quietly and shook his head. He tried to see some logic in the situation. His deep, angry growl echoed in the room, multiplied by the walls and ceilings. "Damn!" Jatred pounded his fist on his thigh. "She fooled me again.
A.O. Peart
#86. The rest of them moved toward the fence, in complete silence. Each of the teenagers jumped swiftly onto the iron spikes. With a blurry speed, they climbed up onto the sharp finials, and leaped down to the other side
A.O. Peart
#87. Only a mediocre man is always at his best,
Neil Peart
#88. I remain the optimist: you just do your best and hope for the best. But it's an evolving state of mind.
Neil Peart
#89. How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit
Neil Peart
#90. Throw off those chains of reason and your prison disappears.
Neil Peart
#91. From first to last, the peak is never passed. Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes.
Neil Peart
#92. 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!'
Neil Peart
#93. I'd be very honored to be the ambassador to drum solos.
Neil Peart
#94. When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass-drum pedal, that's what made the drum set possible.
Neil Peart
#95. 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.
Neil Peart
#96. You can't get away from yourself, or can you? So why are you trying to...
O. Stephen Peart
#97. Don't try to change Doofus, let Doofus change you.
Neil Peart
#98. The important thing is: if you fail once, or if your luck is bad this time, the dream is still there. A dream is only over if you give it up-or if it comes true.
Neil Peart
#99. It's always a happy day when YYZ appears on our luggage tags.
Neil Peart
#100. If I do something weird, play it twice and it's a new part.
Neil Peart
