"I assume he was some kind of politician that lost it and was living on the streets and just going nuts all night," begins Maida with the brand of easy charisma that assures a spellbound audience for each of his effortless tales. "It was so strange. [The next morning] I just caught a few words as I passed by him, and he was one of the most intelligent people I've ever heard speak. Right then I had this enlightenment. I didn't give him a chance, and there's probably so many times where you miss opportunities because you form an opinion so quickly."

- Raine Maida

Taken from Our Lady Peace by Alison Rosen/Axcess magazine[Vol III #3 1995]

"Not a whole lot [is behind the song]. The lyrics are my take on religion. I'm into a lot of meditating. My Dad was Catholic and he tried to school me in that, but I never really caught on. I'm always interested in religion and the way it effects society. The "Starseed" thing is about going out on a meditation journey and coming back with something tangible. Something you actually believe in. Something that means something to me. In Western society, trying to have that incorporated into any religion would be hard to accept. Most people are hard pressed to change their views. I realized with my Dad you can't change the old dog."

- Raine Maida

Taken from ROAR Breakout: Our Lady Peace by Ray Koob/FMQB/March 24th 1995

"Naveed is an ancient Middle Eastern term for bearer of good news encompassing the distance between mysticism and reality," he explains. Naveed bursts with emotional openness coupled with Maida's stream of consciousness musings. The singer intentionally leaves his lyrics open-ended, but the themes are universal, questioning spirituality, love, liberty, hope and despair. "'Naveed' was a friend of mine," explains Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida about the title of his band's debut record (on Relativity). "It's Persian for 'Bearer of Good News,' and in the lyrics, there's always some kind of optimism... the idea was to thread some positively through the entire record."

- Raine Maida

"It's just about how hard it is for kids to grow up today. They're inundated with the media and images and cliques they try to have to fit into. Two images that are really strong for me lyrically are ordinary's just not good enough today,' and when I think of kids today, I would never think of a group of eight year olds going out to a baseball park and throwing the ball around. It doesn't happen any more. I have a nine year old brother; he's either inside playing Nintendo or staying up late on a school night watching Beavis & Butt-Head. And you juxtapose that against the old Superman, on the black and white series. He was a real hero, good values, strong willed, a gentleman, but I think Beavis & Butt-Head wins today."

- Raine Maida

"The song 'Big Dumb Rocket' is about me almost killing one of my best friends with a gun. It was one of those stupid incidents. I didn't know there was a bullet in the chamber, it was a Beretta, I removed the clip, but I didn't know that the bullet stays in the chamber always. That happened about two and half years ago, and I still have nightmares about it. I was just a fucking idiot. Every song, is pretty much based on those four or five seconds where you have the chance to make the right or wrong decision. Luckily, in some of those instances, I didn't have to pay, but I did make the wrong decision."

- Raine Maida

"4 am was like an epiphany," he says. "It happened at about 4 a.m. in my bedroom one night -- I wrote the chords and lyrics in about five minutes. Those types of things scare me, because you can't rely on that stuff. I get a little worried about that. When it happens that quickly, you feel like it's a gift. Sometimes I feel like I didn't write it," he adds, cryptically. "That someone, wherever, gave it to me."

- Raine Maida

"There's a connection between the song 'Clumsy' and it being the title of the album. There's a line in the song that says: 'I'll be waving my hand/watching you drown/watching you scream', it's about seeing something but not seeing it for what it really is. It is about decisions. That image of 'waving your hand/watching you drown', is about seeing someone in the water, they're waving back at you and you're just waving back, not realizing that they are drowning. Or, you think they're drowning, but they're just waving at you. It's those weird situations where you just take something at face value, but you can be so wrong. You have to look deeper and question things. I think it's something that too many people don't do these days. We're so inundated with fucking media, and you just believe it. How many times, not to just focus on us, have we read an interview or an article where we've been completely misquoted? We're just some small band, you think about some of the major players and you really have to question how true it all is."

- Raine Maida

"One Man Army' is about the struggle for individuality. It's about finding the courage to strip naked and set fire to all your inhibitions. It's about cleansing yourself of all the people and things that suffocate your individuality."

- Raine Maida

"[It's] a distress signal, really. It's a call to everyone who's found themselves stuck in their rooms having their souls sucked out of them by TV and having television or the Internet mold their values and interests. It's a call for help from one isolated person to another."

- Raine Maida