Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
While I've won five Junos, I've donated four of them to the National Archives in Ottawa. Which left my fifth Juno sitting, seemingly abandoned by its four family members, on my bookcase in my dining room.
I just want people to know they are the masters of their own fortune and misfortune. A lot of us think that doctors and drugs are going to control and help us, but the reality is we're our own best doctor.
At 10, I heard Neil Diamond's 'Solitary Man' and it moved me so deeply I stood, frozen in place during school recess, feeling such empathy for the narrator in Diamond's masterpiece that my heart was smashed.
When I was 3 or 4, I seemed to be bursting with music. They played Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra in the house, so I learned my vocabulary from song lyrics - I was literally singing before I was talking.
In Don Mills in the Sixties, nothing comes close to the humiliation of losing an argument. In our weird little creative circle, no one cares who has faster fists, but to lose an argument suggests inferior intelligence.
Toronto is exploding with cyclists, with more and more people wanting to cycle and being turned off driving because of the incredible congestion. Biking is a much more efficient way of getting around, and you get there faster.
When you think of bike couriers, you think of hyper speed. They get paid by how fast they can drop stuff off. The faster you go, the more chances you take. And the more chances you take, the greater the war between cyclists and cars.
I just wanted to show people - maybe I'm wrong - that I can still really sing. I can sing better than I ever have before. My intonation is way better, my timing, my phrasing - there's a lot more expression; I feel it's a more lived-in, soulful voice.
Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye's best lyrics match Dylan's prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali.
I don't want to lose my legs, you know. I don't want to be wheeled around in a wheelchair. I don't want to be attached to a catheter. I saw all that stuff happen to my father, and as much as it upset me because I loved my father so much, it also really traumatized me.
I did have one bad accident up north near Deerhurst. I was driving back in the winter on these snowy roads, and these two snowmobilers were racing up a hill and they weren't looking, so they caught me as I was going up the other side of the hill, and they smashed into me.
Ringside seats mean you hear the breaking of ribs, the splattered cartilage of what was once the boxer's nose, the dislocation of the jaw, the horrifying 'ugggh' that the boxer utters milliseconds after receiving a crushing left hook to the solar plexus or kidneys or head.
I think the last thing you want to do as a writer, as a storyteller, is to create indifference. I don't necessarily go out of my way to provoke, but I would much rather have a song that triggers a whole myriad of reactions than a song that inspires a shrug of the shoulder.
Flipping through the 'Toronto Star' one day in 2008, I noticed a piece about a phenomenal boxer from the Philippines who had won several different titles in several different weight divisions. Manny Pacquiao's rise from heart-crushing poverty to the top ranks of his sport was astounding.
I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am.
In a world where people are hungry for quick fixes and sound bites, for instant gratification, there's no patience for the long, slow rebuilding process: implementing after-school programs, hiring more community workers to act as mentors, adding more job training programs in marginalized areas.
In a world where people are hungry for quick fixes and sound bites, for instant gratification, there is not patience for the long. Slow rebuilding process: implementing after school programs, hiring more community workers to act as mentors, adding more job training programs in marginalized areas
You get your heart stomped by the opposite sex, and you're hurting so badly that you write 'Sometimes When We Touch.' But then what happens when you've been married for 25 years? You can't rely on those emotional male-female roller coasters. You have to start using your imagination and the powers of empathy more.
One of the things I did to make myself feel better is that I kicked up my running even more. I knew that I had to stay active, that I had to keep living as if my life was actually going to unfold naturally because when you stop, when you freeze, and you think about it, that's when the demons come and can drag you down.
