I have no illusions of the future. Or maybe it's all illusion. I don't know. I've always been ready for it.

Nobody ever asks me about my lyrics.

We're a band. We're hired for parties. We have to know what to do.

I think you have to show people it's cool and fun to work together. It's your obligation. If you can't do it, who can you expect to do it?

I'm grateful for the friendships and being able to show it, for people's dancing pleasure.

When we watch dance, the artists and the audience are part of a momentary collective experience that will never happen again.

I guess I want people to see me and to try to explain myself, and you don't always get the chance. Sometimes you don't get the chance and maybe no one ever gets the chance to really explain themselves, to have people see them. But I guess I'm doing that or I'm in the process of doing that.

Bob Rock taught me a lot. His friendship has taught me a lot about what you should expect from a recording session and, more importantly, how you shouldn't expect anything less than absolute joyousness. You should feel great. You should feel 14 to be doing it. It's true and it's rare.

I stand in support of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations and all Canadians who find themselves with no voice in our present version of democracy, who are trying to come up with the entry fee that gets them a seat at the table where their pollution future is being discussed.

Ultimately with our band, it's word of mouth. It seems to be the largest cause of The Hip outbreak - if we can align ourselves with a virus.

If I'm to be an 'ist' then, like Bobby Kennedy, I'm probably more of a free market capitalist than an environmentalist. Rather than wanting to tell people to be less bad, I'm saying let's make it fair across the board and stop subsidizing the big heavy-polluting fat cats, let's make it a level playing field.

We used to tie a skipping rope to a pitchfork and try to spear big carp. We never got one. My kids love that story, very 'Lord of the Flies.'

I think the health of our water is tied to a lot: the health of our communities, hence our economy, the health of our basic human rights.

Life's too short for bad coffee.

Even as a kid, I don't think I bought into a lot of the mythology about Canada.

I've always liked R.E.M. because, like so many things I like, they exude a warmth; I like to think that we do, too.

I always like to have a glimmer of hopefulness, even in collapse.

I haven't written too many political lyrics. Nor have I written any pro-Canada lyrics, any kind of jingoistic, nationalistic cant... That stuff doesn't interest me and I don't even know if I could write that if I tried because I don't really feel it.

Music brings people together. So my function in anything I do is to help bring people closer in.

Canadians can be funny.

To become a country, and truly call ourselves Canada, it means we must become one.

I'm agile.

If you want to know what being Canadian is, it's being part of the human race, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, which has been scared off, warded away, girded against.

If we weren't in this band, some of us wouldn't be playing at all. You have tiffs with someone when he has smelly feet in the touring van, but we all respect each other as friends first.