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.

When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass-drum pedal, that's what made the drum set possible.

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.

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.

I'd be very honored to be the ambassador to drum solos.

The reality is that my style of drumming is largely an athletic undertaking, and it does not pain me to realize that, like all athletes, there comes a time to... take yourself out of the game.

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.

People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung.

I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.

When I started playing, I played in R&B bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that.

If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke.

Rudimental snare work is something I've always loved.

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.

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.

I think, in music, you're always hoping that you'll have a like-minded audience and that the music you like making will appeal to them, too.

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.

Live shows were always religion for us. We never played a show - whether it was in front of 15 people or 15,000 - where it wasn't everything we had that night.

It astonished me in the early Nineties to suddenly have musicians admit that they had been inspired and influenced by us. That meant a lot at that time. But of course, being human, the... disrespect isn't even strong enough a word, is it? The opprobrium was painful. Being popular and hated is not satisfying.

Even as a kid, I never wanted to be famous; I wanted to be good.

Too much attention and hoopla doesn't agree with my temperament.

For a person of my sensibility, you're only left with the Democratic party.

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.

Each of us, A CEll Of Awareness... imperfect, and incomplete. Genetic blends, with uncertain ends.

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.