I once performed The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to about 15 sea captains. The song was about a ship that broke in half and sank.

See the judge upon the bench who tries the case as best he can, see the wise and wicked ones who feed upon life's sacred fire, see the soldier with his gun who must be dead to be admired.

Some years later I met Queen Elizabeth II, in our capital Ottawa at a Canada Day celebration. David Foster and I were doing the show and we both met her afterwards. She told me how much she loved the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. She looked at me and said, "oh, that song", and then said again, "that song", and that was all she said.

Don Quixote was a song for a 1969 Michael Douglas movie called Hail Hero! I wrote the title song for the film and they also used the Don Quixote one I had submitted.

When love is true there is no truer occupation.

I try to write songs. At our concerts, we take the cream of the crop from my back catalogue and I don't know if I could write something now that would replace any of that. We don't lose any of the standards. We have lots of songs in rotation.

Rainy day people all know there's no sorrow they can't rise above.