I like Raymond Carver's poetry a lot.

You know, Prime Minister Trudeau's got me. His work with First Nations. He's got everybody. He's going to take us where we need to go.

I've always kept a notebook in my pocket, I've always written stuff down since I was a kid.

I work every day. I write every day. I walk around in silent conversation with my latest unfinished songs.

I had spend a lot of time looking at things intellectually, coming from the head, let's say, rather than the heart, and saying things that way. Turns of phrases became paramount to any kind of feeling behind them, which is not to say they were all devoid of that.

I want my kids to be good. I want them to be safe and have a great, long life. And take what they need from me and leave what they don't. Definitely leave what they don't.

Canada is not Canada. We are not the country we think we are.

In Canada, the major centers to play are very few and far between. Bands that are traveling in Canada really have to travel between gigs.

I like hanging with my family and helping them on their way however I can. There's a new tragicomedy every half-hour, there is laughter, there are tears, and it's all real. They are endlessly entertaining, they have given me so much, they've given me a chance to 'see' things again.

We did reach a wider audience with 'SNL,' but it's hard to know what attracts people to your band in the long run.

I grew up on the lake and spent most of that time outdoors. As a musician, I travel widely around the country and talk to a lot of people, from all walks of life. That experience, combined with my rock and roll roots gives me something of an affinity for the underdog. In many ways, the environment is also the underdog - so, it's an easy fit.

I think the recording industry is founded on that principle: to approximate the live experience, to approximate that thing that evaporates as it's happening, disappears as it's happening.

What would be great is if everyone who bought a record got a comp ticket to a show.

I feel like I'm playing the washboard more than the guitar.

I like Al Purdy.

I work at being a better member of my family. So I know that that affects and drifts and soaks into my work, and my art.

You know, I've been hit with a Greb boot in the face and I've been spat on. And my kids light up when they hear these stories. It really takes their minds off their troubles.

When we started in university we were wearing lampshades on our heads and playing wacky covers like 'I'm a Believer.'

We got instant gratification when we would slip in one of our own songs and people would cheer. We started getting a lot of gratification from writing.

Once we went into the basement and learned a song, we felt successful. Then we learned two songs, and then we got a gig, and on and on - and that's the way musicians think. I don't know about other people - I mean, I don't know about all musicians either - but some are more driven than others.

The Sadies have the ability to create soundscapes, and to put you in places.

I was a rink rat growing up. I was a goalie and my father was a busy father of five, so he would come when he could. When he did show up, I'd look up and there he would be.

The Bruins have become so much more to me than some boyhood fascination.

It will take 150 years or seven generations to heal the wound of the residential school.

I've changed like crazy. I know I have, 'cause I work at it.

We've played on 'Saturday Night Live' and got not even a Rolling Stone review.

I'm not a rock star writing poetry. I don't feel like a rock star and I don't know what one is, actually. I'm a goalie/poet or a hotel guest/poet or a father/poet.

The only criterion we used in doing cover material was we wanted to do songs that we wished bands would play when we went out. We were doing Yardbirds and Rolling Stones cover songs-which is not any big deal, but where we were from, all we were getting were Top 40 bands.

When someone gives you a piece of music, they are really giving you a piece of themselves.

When you write and make music, there's a tendency to save stuff... to be cagey, to be savvy.

Our sound is nothing like the Doors.

I love dance - trying to express myself wordlessly.

It's a gas, just phoning up some bands and saying: 'You don't know us but we love you and would you come play with us?'

Acting is like lifting a 400-pound feather. It's a feather, how hard could it be? And yet, you go to lift it and it's heavy. For that reason, I love it, because it's very hard and difficult and challenging and obviously I want to learn more.

We were big Clash fans, you know, big Who fans and I think we would listen to this music and talk about music and do nothing but music night and day, and when it came time to actually making our own music, you feel compelled to sort of tuck all those influences away, not show them.

Within the Universal deal, we've always felt like an independent act. We've never been told what to do. We've used their resources to our own design.

In the past, when you were just starting out, you had a day and a half of studio time - maybe two, if your buddy's uncle lets you stay.

Being a dad, and being in a rock band, it's harder than it looks. But we tried. And we try.

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.

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.

I'm agile.

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

Canadians can be funny.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Life's too short for bad coffee.

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.