Ghost Rider Quotes

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Without knowing it, I had identified a subtle but important part of the healing process. There would be no peace for me, no life for me, until I learned to forgive life for what it had done to me, forgive others for still being alive, and eventually, forgive myself for being alive.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Everything that we were, everything we based our lives upon, everything that we believed is gone. In my journal one time, I expressed the feeling of hurt that I carry around, so similar to the feeling of being betrayed, and I concluded that I had been betrayed, by Life itself, and that’s pretty deep. So, the betrayed ones, like you and me, have to start all over again, from Absolute Zero, and construct some new version of “Life,” one that we can “live with.” No way we can hold onto what we used to believe, and no way we can forget what has actually happened in our lives, and in our worlds. We will never trust Life again.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“your soul is stained with the blood of the innocent, feel their pain”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“And me, I’ve got to start all over. Not only build a new life, but construct a new person. I call my old self “that other guy,” for I share nothing but his memories, and everything he ever liked I’ve had to discover all over again, one by one, so that I’ve held on to, for example, reading, motorcycling, and birdwatching, but I’m not yet sure about art or music (I can look at it or listen to it, but not with the same “engagement” I used to), and I have no interest in work, charity, world events, or anybody I don’t know. In my present gypsy life, I encounter a lot of people every day, and some of them I instinctively like and respond to in a brief encounter at a gas station or small-town diner, but for the most part I look around at ugly and mean-spirited people and think, “Why are you alive?”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Dedicated to the future, with honor to the past.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Thoreau, “At death, our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us, and are found out, or depart farther from us, and are forgotten.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Just follow your front wheel.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Perils of solitude #1: People talk to you. I’d rather listen.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“There have been those who have actually said they envy me, though mostly strangers, and I doubt you’d be that short-sighted or self-absorbed. This is way more freedom than anyone should ever desire, and carries way more baggage than “freedom” can ever sustain. This is more like “desperate flight,” and another name I have for myself is “The Ghost Rider.” I’m a ghost, I carry a few ghosts with me, and I’m riding through a world that isn’t quite real. But I’m okay as long as I keep moving . . .”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“I had come to appreciate the long open stretches of two-lane highway across the sagey sea and mountain-studded plateau of the Great Basin, but the towns and cities were another thing. I liked the natural face of Nevada, but was not as impressed by the human face.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Grim faced and forbidding
Their faces closed tight
An angular mass of New Yorkers
Pacing in rhythm
Race the oncoming night
They chase through the streets of Manhattan
Head first humanity
Pause at a light
Then flow through the streets of the city

They seem oblivious
To a soft spring rain
Like an English rain
So light, yet endless
From a leaden sky”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“What a fool I used to be (The truest words I ever wrote, and they get truer every day. )”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“The only reason I am alive is because I could not die.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“I saw that it was plain wrong to evaluate people according to race, for it was clear that culture was the real divider among peoples.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Big ring around moon, three or four days from full. Rain coming? Big wave every 10 seconds, sometimes like distant explosion, booming sub-bass.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“I watched a storm pass to the north, trailing veils of dark rain.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“I remember thinking, “How does anyone survive something like this? And if they do, what kind of person comes out the other end?” I didn’t know, but throughout that dark time of grief, sorrow, desolation, and complete despair, something in me seemed determined to carry on. Something would come up.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“It is said that pearls, being organic, become imbued with the essence of their wearer, and thus are the most personal of jewels,”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Man, you have to admit, your future’s so bright, we don’t have to wear shades. Just rainsuits . . .”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“That’s not hunting,” I wrote, “that’s just shooting.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“fell into their open arms.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“...I decided I didn't want to give offense to any believers by trumpeting my "non-belief", even though they might not show me the same courtesy.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“Getting through Lake Tahoe was already like L.A., with construction all over the place,”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“2/ KICK YOUR OWN ASS, GENTLY. I’ve been trying to set a few modest goals, both daily and weekly. In the course of a day, it’s good to get some stupid things accomplished, and off your “list.” I guess because it leaves you feeling that you and the “rest of the world” still have something to do with each other! Like today, for example, I can think back on sending a fax to my brother on his birthday, leaving a phone message for Brutus at his “hotel” on his birthday, phoning my Dad on his birthday (yep, all on the same day), then driving to Morin Heights to the ATM machine, to St. Sauveur for grocery shopping, and planning all that so I’d still have enough daylight left to go snowshoeing in the woods. And then I could drink. Not a high-pressure day, and hardly earth-shaking activities, but I laid them out for myself and did them (even though tempted to “not bother” with each of them at one point or another). I gave myself a gentle kick in the ass when necessary, or cursed myself out for a lazy fool, and because of all that, I consider today a satisfactory day. Everything that needed to be done got done. And by “needs” I certainly include taking my little baby soul out for a ride. And drinking. And there are little side benefits from such activities, like when the cashier in the grocery store wished me a genuinely-pleasant “Bonjour,” and I forced myself to look at her and return the greeting. The world still seems unreal to me, but I try not to purposely avoid contact with pleasant strangers. It wouldn’t be polite! Another “little goal” for me right now is spending an hour or two at the desk every morning, writing a letter or a fax to someone like you, or Brutus, or Danny, who I want to reach out to, or conversely, to someone I’ve been out of touch with for a long while, maybe for a year-and-a-half or two years. These are friends that I’ve decided I still value, and that I want as part of my “new life,” whatever it may be. It doesn’t really matter what, but just so you can say that you changed something in the course of your day: a neglected friend is no longer neglected; an errand that ought to be dealt with has been dealt with.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“setting off,” when the world both contracts and expands at the same time.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“You know, I used to think, ‘Life is great, but people suck,’ but now I’ve had to learn the opposite, ‘Life sucks, but people are great.”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

“the”
― Neil Peart, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road