The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.

I was raised a Christian, but I wouldn't call myself a Christian now. I think when I was younger it was easier to focus on the negative, nihilist vision... this is sort of picking up on the other half of the body, which is God and white light.

The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.

Injuries are nothing to be ashamed about.

My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.

I mean there's certainly a lot of progressive rock and metal that exists at the underground level, which has its own vitality, as it should. But it seems to have lost its ability to really charge up the hill.

Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don't get so they don't think it's funny.