I still have a vivid memory of my excitement when I first saw a chart of the periodic table of elements.

I had worked on dogs for a couple of years developing a renal transplant operation. We had dogs running around with kidneys we had transplanted back into themselves.

I was shocked. They were going to give me money to make this really odd show? Well, I still had little thought of it going to series, but I thought it was great that my next short film was going to be paid for.

When I speak to students and they ask how much money you can make in art, as if that is a reason to persue it, I tell them to do something else.

I would love to make my music and be completely anonymous, but that doesn't work. You can't have success and be faceless.

I don't come from a lot of money. In fact, I don't come from any money.

But for me, I thought you made a record, you got on a bus, went out and played your shows and made a lot of money. That was the way it was supposed to go down. But there's a lot more to it than that. There are a lot of early mornings, late nights, a lot of traveling, a lot of being away from home, being away from your family.

My all-time favourite political promise - more a boast than a promise, really - came from former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, who said in the lead-up to the 1976 Olympics, 'The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.'