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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.

Neil Peart

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Neil Peart
Age: 67 †
Born: 1952
Born: September 12
Died: 2020
Died: January 7
Composer
Drummer
Jazz Musician
Lyricist
Musician
Record Producer
Songwriter
Writer
City of Hamilton
Neil Ellwood Peart
Deliberate
Worked
Head
Whatever
Comes
Art
Play
Hard
Improviser

More quotes by Neil Peart

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Geddy once joked, 'You're the only guy I know who rehearses to rehearse!
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If you want something done right, just forget it.
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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.
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Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.
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Throw off those chains of reason and your prison disappears.
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I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.
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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...'
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Don't try to change Doofus, let Doofus change you.
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...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.
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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.
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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.
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I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
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Look in, look the storm in the eye. Look out, to the sea and the sky. Look around, at the sight and sound. Look in, look out, look around.
Neil Peart
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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.
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Living in the limelight: the universal dream for those who wish to SEEM. Those who wish to BE, must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme.
Neil Peart
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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.
Neil Peart
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Lessons taught but never learned, all around us anger burns. Guide the future by the past. Long ago the mould was cast.
Neil Peart
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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?
Neil Peart
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Lotus-land as it appears in 'Free Will' is simply a metaphor for an idealized background, a 'land of milk and honey.' It is sometimes also used as a pejorative name for Los Angeles, though that was not in my mind when I wrote it.
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Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves.
Neil Peart