Where else are you gonna store your weed?
"Here in Vancouver people think we're kind of tacky - like headbangers - but if we were in Montreal we would probably just look like Montrealers. Aren't Québécois people like, total bangers? Don't all you guys have, like, mullets? You know, with the super-tight jeans and fanny packs. I know you all wear fanny packs in Quebec."

» Stink Mitt MC Betti Forde

Oppressive regimes 1, defenders of a free press 0
"Last weekend, when I was handing out flyers informing people of our upcoming benefit show at Kola Note, you wouldn't believe how many people just told me, ‘Good, I'm happy to see journalists in jail, they have too much power to begin with.'"

» Reporters Without Borders communications
director Emily Jacquard

Um… the Frenchman perhaps?
"In France it's impolite to ask someone from out of nowhere their name or what they do in life. Which is a very standard conversation starter here, the lowest common denominator of conversation. The French don't value the lowest common denominator. If a Frenchman is asked his name and what he does in life and he reacts badly, well, who is being rude?"

» Jean-Benoît Nadeau, co-author of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not the French

Plus, we don't invade Third World countries
"Even though America is the land of the free, Canada seems to be far more free towards young people."

» Alex Koroknay-Palicz, president of the Maryland-based National
Youth Rights Association, on his country's drinking age

To each his own
"I believe in You, beautiful Phallus, in your strength and your power, in your ability to bring ecstasy, when being sucked, licked, suckled or masturbated, all together. You offer me the stiffness, beauty, the energy and your immaculate cum."

» The Temple Priapus's Penis prayer

And the Pope's a dope
"Mother Teresa was a silly bitch. She was like a dog chasing her tail around for 93 years. Guess what, Mother Teresa - you wouldn't have to save all these starving babies if you'd put a condom on the people who produced them, so shut the fuck up."

» Torquil Campbell of Stars

Drugs are bad
There's a mythology I want to break for young people attracted to the drug world. Today's drug game is a pure, cutthroat, capitalistic pursuit. Twenty years ago, it was an adventure. Today it's a very harrowing world to live in. That's why you get these motorcycle numbnuts walking around like Al Capone. It's the cocaine they stick up their nose that makes them think like that."

» Peter MacAllister, author and former West End Gang member

California über alles
"I don't want a fuckin' hooligan as my governor, I don't care if he's a billionaire. And he says things like, ‘I want the children of California to have a wonderful upbringing like I had.' Dude, your dad was in the fucking SS! What, was he dragging people to the fuckin' gas chamber? That's a valid point."

» Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe on Governor Schwarzenegger

Crazycowards.com
"It's disgusting. I'm disturbed, to say the least. I don't know what kind of person gets a thrill out of this sort of thing, probably the same type who would torture animals. What kind of thrill is it to slap somebody who can't defend himself in the face? It takes a brave man to throw a drink on a man who is sleeping; I wonder if there was an able-bodied football player, would they do the same thing?"

» Veteran downtown beat cop John Parker, discussing www.crazypricks.com video which features local homeless people being abused for fun and profit

Fear factors
"I swear, I'd tell you, if I thought I had some really cool fear. My fears are very middle-class and North American, really… I have no exotic fears."

» Filmmaker and Canuck horror icon David Cronenberg (Spider), when asked what he's afraid of

Suckling pig, anyone?
"As piglets, their tails are sliced off, their teeth are chipped, and then they're castrated - all without anaesthetic. In the movie we're showing, there's a quick scene of a piglet being picked up, its scrotum sliced open and the testicles pulled out. Their screams are enough to raise the roof. It looks extremely painful."

» Global Action Network director Andrew Plumbly

Crazy for Crispin
"Certainly, a good benefit of being an actor is that attractive girls may like you as a result. That can be a nice thing."

» Crispin Glover

With the exception of Fox News, of course…
"As far as media is concerned, especially American media, you can't trust anything you see on television, or anything you read in the newspaper. American media is completely corporate controlled, and in no way, not even on public television, are the vast majority of people represented. Any poll you see, anything you see coming out of some talking head's mouth, is not to be trusted at all. In order to get a full version, you have to pay attention to all media, independent, underground or otherwise, and lay it against mainstream media. More important than that, you have to experience it yourself. Once that occurs, you'll never trust televised news again."

» Brooklyn MC Talib Kweli

Is that another pretentious screenplay rolled up in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
"The two are linked, clearly. They bring the same thing: pleasure and pain. When you are looking at sexuality, you're also looking at death. That's probably why we're killing so much - to feel alive."

» French filmmaker Bruno Dumont, on his arthouse epic Twentynine Palms, which featured explicit scenes of sex and violence

Bi-curious cops?
"Their questions were weird. They were asking how many times your dick gets erect on stage, and if you touch the clients, and about sex in the back."

» John, a stripper at Taboo, describing his interrogation by MUC police after the club was raided last May

Keeping it real
"I started working at such a young age as an actor, so I tend to see the world in movies. Everything looks like a scene in a movie to me."

» Matt Dillon

Probably best to cross the street then
"What can I say? Violence is fun. For me it's a big part of the rock 'n' roll experience, and with us, violence is always right around the corner."

» Dwarves singer Blag Dahlia

Schoolgirl lust
"I imagine they'd get the same harassment and attention if they were going to come to school in the way they normally dress on weekends."

» Susyn Borer, headmistress of Miss Edgar's and Miss Cramp's School, commenting on the attention her female students' school uniforms generate from older men

Hulk in Fantasyland
"They want to know if I can still lift cars like I did on TV. I can't convince them I can't. I guess the show was just very believable."

» Lou "Incredible Hulk" Ferrigno, discussing a common request he gets from the Hulk fans he meets on the convention circuit

Vertical smiles
"We want to put it in medical clinics so girls will see it and know that they're not freaks."

» Head and Hands special events co-ordinator Fiona Keats, discussing
the controversial poster for their sex-ed video All SEXED Up, featuring 12 up-close and personal photos of various local vaginas

No label queen
"I'm a big opponent of labels. African-American judge, Jewish vice presidential candidate, lesbian congresswoman, transgendered military officer, whatever. I don't recall anyone referring to Bill Clinton as our Caucasian, heterosexual, WASP male ex-president. In other words, he's normal and everyone with a label isn't. I just feel like labelling's a really bad idea."

» Director Joel Schumacher (Phone Booth) on his being labelled a gay director

Nah, do you really think so?
"If a Satanist is out to harm other people or drink blood from babies, then I think that is just deeply insane."

» King Diamond

Canada Customs culture conspiracy exposed!
"If anyone's to blame [for the riot], it's Customs. We're a band, we came over here to play music for the kids. And from what I've been told, bands from abroad don't get into this country. They don't want the kids to see bands from other cultures."

» The Exploited's resident genius, Wattie

Blowing more than hot air
"I think it's odd that at the same time we have all these reality shows and commercial films that have all this gross-out sex humour, it seems like when you try to show real love and tender love and sex, people are so shocked and criticize it… I'm just curious as to why the scene in The Brown Bunny would be so questioned when all that other stuff isn't."

» Chloë Sevigny, on the controversies surrounding The Brown Bunny a film in which she gives an on-screen blow job to Vincent Gallo

Sheep hits the fan
"When we released our album in Norway and were supposed to go on a big tour, sadly there was this pyrotechnics accident in the U.S., so there was loads of press about us in all the Scandinavian papers. [Our pyrotechnics guy] Hagen was often interviewed, he would say that nobody will get hurt, our concerts are safe, everything's cool, but the next week he went to see Mayhem, a Norwegian black metal band, and sadly he was hit with a big sheep's head."

» Tarjei Strøm of Ralph Myerz & the Jack Herren Band

Botching the job
"I can't wait for Saddam Hussein to be dead. I would just feel happy. The world would be a better place. But you have to remember that that doesn't excuse just how they fucking botched this entire thing, soup to nut. I feel like I could have gone to the UN with four magic markers and a notepad and convinced the whole world to come with me to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It's Saddam Hussein, for fuck's sake! Who doesn't want to get rid of that bastard?"

» David Rees, creator of comic strip Get Your War On

Slap happy
"They were all incredibly sweet and tremendously un-Diva like. I was actually kind of disappointed. I wanted to be slapped out by a ballerina on a daily basis. But no such luck. They're all very sweet and cordial."

» Filmmaker Guy Maddin, on working with a cast of dancers for the first time for his feature Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary

Risky business
"Part of the pleasure of watching a one-man band is like watching a tightrope walker to see whether they fall off or not. It's like people going to the gladiators' den just to watch arms ands limbs get chopped off."

» Jeremy Jacobsen, aka the Lonesome Organist

It's not all clovers and falling down drunk, you know
"I've always felt the parade needed more politics than it has, you know, support for the Catholics in Northern Ireland - who have never been allowed to march in the parade. And this is a disgrace. They say they don't want politics in the parade but, of course, that's a political statement in itself. These days I just see St. Patrick's Day as an excuse to get pissed with old friends. Fuck that cutesy shamrock crap."

» David Fennario

Acidic jazz
"There is nothing more unpredictable than a saxophone player with a bad soulpatch and a penchant for Jamiroquai."

» The Mole of Soul

Stick a fork in me, I'm done!
"There of course is the time we played at Foufounes and our singer Jimmy smashed a beer bottle over his head and cut a major artery. The next time we came back he figured he had to outdo himself so he doused himself in lighter fluid and got our friend Billy Bob to breathe fire on him. He of course didn't use any Vaseline and there was no fire extinguisher around. He was like a human torch. After that, the whole band started lighting themselves on fire for the rest of the tour. People ask me if I have seen the Jackass movie and I just say, ‘No, I've lived it for 20 years.'"

» Dayglo Abortions drummer Jesus Bonehead

Straight but not narrow
"I've even had some very macho Italian men come up to me and say that they've seen the show. And I've thought, ‘Okay, they're going to beat me up now.' Instead, they've said, ‘We loved it. When are you going to write your next play?'"

» Playwright and screenwriter Steve Galluccio, on reactions to his gay-themed play-cum-movie Mambo Italiano in his native Little Italy 'hood in Montreal

One o'clock, two o'clock, 8 a.m. rock
"Montreal is the only city with three world-class afterhours clubs within two kilometres of each other with Sona, Aria and Stereo. That's unheard of elsewhere. These are legitimate businesses. Everybody gets paid, they're good corporate tax citizens, they have payrolls and employees and they attract a lot of people from out of town. And rather than leave the clubs in the middle of the night, people leave at 8 a.m. I don't know how residents could be annoyed by that."

» Ian Huggins, an afterhours aficionado who runs MTLNIGHTS, a Web forum devoted to the local late-night dance club scene

Hip today, gone tomorrow
"We used to play to a lot of record-collecting garage-rock Nazis and hipsters and now we are getting frat boys with Cleveland Cavaliers baseball caps. I can't figure that one out at all. Once you become a hip band, you have to keep doing the same things over and over again. That brings this kind of expectation as far as the audience goes, and with us, we're like, ‘Hey, let's play all Banana Splits covers tonight,' so I don't think we'll be hip for very long."

» The Dirtbombs' frontman Mick Collins

You forgot psychotic
"She's bright and funny. It's surprising considering the circumstances. Prison doesn't usually do that to people."

» Karla Homolka biographer Stephen Williams, on his subject

And how was Jagger involved in this?
"It was comparable to having sex for the first time. It's a big build up and only afterwards do you realize what happened. In the middle you can't soak in what's happening, then it goes by really quick and before you know it, you're packing the truck and looking for a bathroom."

» Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips on playing SARS-stock in Toronto

Wake up and give those zombies a hand
"Aside from the general link, which is that it seems the kids who like these movies like this kind of music, for me the main link is how both are so dismissed. It doesn't matter how good the film is or how good the record is, or how many people saw the movie or how many records were sold. It still gets treated like somebody's dirty little secret. For one year they lost their minds and gave Silence of the Lambs awards. But for the most part it doesn't matter how good the horror film is, they'll treat it like crap."

» Musician-cum-filmmaker Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses) on the fact that heavy metal music and horror movies just don't get any respect

D'oh!
"It's right near the Palestine Hotel, where the straight press is staying - it's the safest place in town."

» Peace activist Mary Foster, describing the living conditions of her Iraq Peace Team colleagues in Baghdad. The Palestine Hotel was shelled by an American tank soon afterwards, killing two journalists

Think unhorny thoughts
"The device isn't perfect, but it's the best procedure to determine if somebody is a sexual delinquent or not."

» Sexologist Édouard Beltrami, on his penis gauge

No kidding
"I understand that there are two separate entities: the terrorists and bandits, and the Chechen people, who suffer very much. It's difficult to say who is right and who is wrong. The Russians are... well, they're not the nicest enemy to have."

» Vesselin Nedkov, survivor of last year's Moscow theatre hostage crisis

Impenetrable is right
"It is like biting into a nouvelle vague peach. Our sound is the beauty of geometric abstraction. It is gilded lace in a world of bitter, salted tears. Our music is a gossamer loincloth in a dark cave of minotaurs. Truth be told, our music is a smoky, impenetrable fortress."

» Adam Gollner of We Are Molecules

Putting an end to The End
"The toughest thing about an apocalypse film is figuring out how to end it. We spent a lot of time thinking about it. We shot a number of different endings and tried really hard to figure out which one worked the best. Anyway, they'll all be there on the DVD for people to decide for themselves."

» Director Danny Boyle, on coming up with a fitting closure for his runaway hit horror film 28 Days Later

Humble piehole
"This album will leave people with pee and poo in their trousers after the first three seconds. I don't hear Bowie, Beyoncé or Radiohead making people make caca in their pantalones. But more importantly, it's the best music to ever have come out of Montreal. I mean, every other band in Montreal literally sucks the ball sweat offa my Balzac, in a manner of speaking. No musician in this town can ever hold a candle to me because I'm the greatest performer of all time and my album is the best in the world."

» Mike Gee on his debut album Live From the Gee Spot

Funny, that
"It's not a problem for me to say ‘My back is tense, I'd like it rubbed.' Nobody would go ‘Oh, that's weird.' But if I say, ‘Oh, I'm really horny, I'd like to get jerked off, I think I'll go downtown to find a stroke parlour,' judgements would start flying about all over the place."

» Erotic activist John Ince

The wonders down under
"You know how you think kangaroos have pockets? You ask, oh, is it a zipper pocket or a button pocket? It's a sphincter! I licked my finger and put it in! It's a sphincter!"

» Canned Hamm's Little Hamm

The importance of image
"We once did a show with the Bad Brains and decided that we would try and have some fun, so we wore Afro wigs and blackface. That didn't last for long though, because it looked too stupid and it would take days for the shoe polish to come off. After that we were at rehearsal and we got really drunk and started talking about actually finding a good image. We didn't really remember anything but the next day there was a piece of paper that just said ‘denim homo' and that's basically how it started."

» Turbonegro keyboardist Pal Pot Pamparius on the origin of the band's butch-fag schtick