I want to be able to look back and think that as long as I was going this, I did the best that I could.

What most people do is try to find a comfortable persona that they're in alignment with and the public likes and appreciates them for.

Smashing Pumpkins has never been a band about hit songs.

The ideology of the Smashing Pumpkins was ultimately more valuable than the music of the Smashing Pumpkins. That's what critics can't put their finger on.

If the next record is no better than Gish, then we've failed.

Twenty-eight to 31 is the tough period. You have to be really careful because it's so cataclysmic, so life-altering. People do really dramatic things like get married, or they'll get divorced. Your chances of committing suicide go way up. It's basically psychic death. You see the signs of it around 27, and you're still on the out-end of it around 31. Everyone I've talked to who's gone through that and come out the other side walks out of it like, "MY LIFE IS GREAT".

We have a problem with any labels that people try to hang on us, because all it does is drag you down.